U.S. GOVERNMENTAL INFORMATION

OPERATIONS AND STRATEGIC

COMMUNICATIONS: A DISCREDITED

TOOL OR USER FAILURE?

IMPLICATIONS FOR FUTURE CONFLICT

Steve Tatham

U.S. ARMY WAR COLLEGE

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U.S. GOVERNMENTAL INFORMATION 

OPERATIONS AND STRATEGIC 

COMMUNICATIONS: A DISCREDITED 

TOOL OR USER FAILURE? 

IMPLICATIONS FOR FUTURE CONFLICT

Steve Tatham

December 2013

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The author is grateful to the following individuals for their 

assistance in the writing of this monograph: Dr. Lee Rowland 

(Behavioral Dynamics Institute, London, UK); Professor Steve 

Corman (Center for Strategic Communication, Arizona); Dr. 

Amy Zalman (National Defense University, Washington, DC); 

Mr. Rick Josten (Joint Information Operations Warfare Center, 

Texas); Mr. Tim Thomas (Foreign Military Studies Office, Kansas); Mr. Matt Armstrong (former Executive Director of the U.S. 

Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy, Illinois); Lieutenant 

Colonel Matthew J. Yandura, U.S. Army (Joint Staff, DoD); Mr. 

Austin Branch (OUSD, DoD); Mr. Nigel Oakes (SCL Ltd.); and 

Mr. Ian Tunnicliffe (ITOI research).

ISBN 1-58487-600-X

vii

FOREWORD

Today America’s uniformed military leaders and 

civilian defense officials are developing ways to use 

national power more effectively and efficiently. Gone 

are the days when the United States had such extensive 

economic and military resources that it could largely 

disregard the costs of its strategy. The quest to bring 

costs and benefits into balance places the most fundamental concepts of American strategy under scrutiny. 

One important initiative in the quest for increased 

effectiveness and efficiency has been the Strategic 

Landpower Task Force. A joint effort of the Army, the 

Marine Corps, and the Special Operations Command, 

this task force was created to remind the Joint Force 

and policymakers that armed conflict remains a clash 

of interests in which the antagonists attempt to impose their will on each other. Ultimately, what might 

be called the human domain of conflict is decisive. 

Thus, strategic effectiveness and efficiency require an 

understanding of human objectives and psychological 

effects. This is challenging. The profusion of information sources, and interconnectedness of the modern 

world, make it difficult for strategists to gauge the effect which a given action or statement will have on its 

intended audience. That many U.S. military activities 

take place in cultures very different from the American one only adds to this difficulty. But however difficult it is to gauge these effects, it is also vital to do so.

All this means that integrated interagency information operations are an important component of 

strategic Landpower. In this monograph, Dr. Steve 

Tatham, the United Kingdom’s longest continuously 

serving officer in information activities, uses opera-
tions in Afghanistan to identify the shortcomings of 

U.S. strategic communications, particularly the tendency to rely on contractors using methods drawn 

from advertising and marketing. While Tatham believes that strategic communications will become 

a more rather than a less important part of security 

strategy and thus merits continued resourcing, it can 

be streamlined. Part of this streamlining is relying on 

specialists within the military and other government 

agencies rather than contractors. This is an important 

consideration as the U.S. military undertakes a broad 

re-evaluation of the division-of-labor between contractors, uniformed personnel, and government civilians in the wake of Operations IRAQI FREEDOM and 

ENDURING FREEDOM.

Effective strategic communications, like the other 

components of strategic Landpower, requires an increased focus on the complexities of the human domain during leader development and professional education within the U.S. Army and the other services. 

Army leaders must decide both how to do this and 

how much of it to do, since emphasizing it will come at 

the expense of some other skill. Future military leaders and strategists cannot be experts in every foreign 

culture, but they do need to understand how to use 

both hard and soft power to attain psychological effects in cultures radically different from the American 

one. Both the professional military educational system 

and the broader process for leader development must 

find ways to accomplish this.

For the U.S. Army, the development of strategic 

Landpower has just begun. The architects of strategic Landpower will need much additional research 

viii
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and analysis on the human domain of conflict. Dr. 

Tatham’s study is an important contribution to this 

long-range effort.

 

 DOUGLAS C. LOVELACE, JR.

 Director

 Strategic Studies Institute and

 U.S. Army War College Press

xi

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

STEVE TATHAM is the United Kingdom’s (UK) longest continuously serving Officer in Information Activities. Between 1998 and 2003, he worked in Media 

Operations, covering conflicts in Sierra Leone (2000), 

Afghanistan (2001), and Iraq (2003), where he was 

public spokesman for the invasion. Between 2003 

and 2013, he worked in Information Operations and 

Psychological Operations. Dr. Tatham was the Commanding Officer of 15 (UK) Psychological Operations 

Group from 2010-2013, during which time he deployed on multiple occasions to Afghanistan; was involved at the operational level in operations in Libya 

and has deployed to East Africa in an advisory role. 

During his tenure in Command, and in a tight fiscal 

climate, he expanded the PsyOps Group by 81% by 

demonstrating the centrality of PsyOps to UK military 

operations to previously sceptical military commanders and budgeteers. In 2007 he advised the then commander of British Forces in Afghanistan on influence 

operations when the strategically vital town of Musa 

Qala was retaken by British and Afghan forces. The 

Pentagon later described that operation as the “single 

best thing to come out of Afghanistan.” Dr. Tatham 

is co-founder of the Influence Advisory Panel and in 

early 2014 left the UK military to pursue a career in 

business. He currently works in the UK Ministry of 

Defence on Strategic Communication issues. Dr. Tatham is the author of two books: Losing Arab Hearts 

& Minds. The Coalition, Al-Jazeera and Muslim Public 

Opinion (Hurst & Co, 2006) and Behavioural Conflict: 

Why Understanding People’s Motivations Will Prove Decisive In Future Conflict (Military Studies Press, 2012). 
Dr. Tatham holds both an M.Phil. and a Ph.D. in international relations, both focusing on ideas of influence 

and strategic communication in conflict areas.

xii
xiii

SUMMARY

Through the prism of operations in Afghanistan, 

this monograph examines how the U.S. Government’s 

Strategic Communication (SC) and, in particular, the 

Department of Defense’s (DoD) Information Operations (IO) and Military Information Support to Operations (MISO) programs, have contributed to U.S. 

strategic and foreign policy objectives. It will assess 

whether current practice is fit for purpose in possible 

future operations and will argue that the U.S. Government has for many years been encouraged by large 

contractors to approach communications objectives 

through techniques heavily influenced by advertising 

and marketing. These techniques attempt to change 

hostile attitudes to the United States and its foreign 

policy in the belief that this will subsequently reduce 

hostile behavior. The author will argue that while an 

attitudinal approach may work in convincing U.S. 

citizens to buy consumer products, it does not easily 

translate to the conflict- and crisis-riven societies to 

which it has been applied. In these cases, the United 

States would have been far better advised to work directly to mitigate undesired behaviors, and forego attempts to change the underlying attitudes. 

The author argues that the United States must now 

actively operationalize the significant body of social 

and behavioral science research which has become 

available, in order to mitigate specific undesired behaviors on the ground: either in advance, as a tool of 

strategic deterrence in Phase 0 operations or in Phase 

1, 2, 3, and 4 operations as a component coupled to 

conventional military and diplomatic responses. 

The monograph closes with a brief examination of 

Chinese and Russian developments in this highly 

specialized area. 

1

U.S. GOVERNMENTAL INFORMATION 

OPERATIONS AND STRATEGIC 

COMMUNICATIONS: A DISCREDITED 

TOOL OR USER FAILURE? 

IMPLICATIONS FOR FUTURE CONFLICT

Do not believe what you want to believe until you 

know what you ought to know.

 Professor R. V. Jones

Principal Scientific Advisor 

 United Kingdom Secret 

 Intelligence Service

BACKGROUND

In the two wars of choice that have defined the 

first decade of the 21st century, the United States and 

its coalition partners have found that despite overwhelming supremacy of firepower, the digitization of 

the battlefield, exceptional Intelligence, Surveillance, 

Targeting and Reconnaissance (ISTAR) capabilities, 

advanced cyber and other agency assistance, and an 

unsophisticated and often disparate enemy, the concept of “victory” has remained stubbornly elusive. In 

Iraq, despite massive investment of blood and treasure 

by both the United States and its coalition partners, 

the turning point was arrived at not simply as a result 

of a troop surge, but through unanticipated events 

among the local population.1

 In Afghanistan, a seemingly beaten homogenous enemy slowly returned to 

battle, morphing into a more heterogeneous group, 

picking the time and place of their engagement and 

utilizing cheap yet deadly effective weaponry such as 

improvised explosive devices (IEDs) to cause significant damage to coalition personnel, materiel, and mo-
2

rale, before slipping back into the communities from 

which they are drawn. 

Alongside this hard-won experience from the 

ground, significant academic and doctrinal research 

has suggested that the United States and its allies 

may actually have approached their campaigns in 

the wrong way. For example, in War By Other Means, 

RAND suggested that: 

The existence of a global Muslim community that 

has a personality in the world arena challenges the 

U.S. strategic concept of a war on terror that narrowly seeks military outcomes while ignoring the 

hostility it may engender in that larger community. Lost in the fog of GWOT [Global War on Terrorism] is whether using armies to fight terrorists 

hidden among Muslim populations is spawning 

more hostility and resistance. The data suggest that 

it is.2

RAND was not alone. Books such as John MacKinlay’s Insurgent Archipelago,

3

 which warns of the “propaganda of the deed,” David Kilcullen’s Accidental Guerilla,4

 and General Rupert Smith’s The Utility of Force5

all point to the need for a different campaign strategy 

for the wars of the 21st century. A critical mass of policy and doctrine maker’s opinion slowly formed, and 

the United States and its allies have started looking at 

other ways of achieving effect. A very visible demonstration of this was the establishment and deployment 

of Human Terrain Teams (HTT) designed to provide 

specialist social science and anthropological analysis 

to deployed commanders, a program which owes its 

lineage to the U.S. Civil Operations and Revolutionary 

Development Support (CORDS), a counterinsurgency 

(COIN) program developed by the U.S. Government 
3

during the Vietnam war.6 However, there have been 

developments in COIN doctrine that have, perhaps, 

most clearly signposted the change in thinking, alongside the traditional emphasis on the importance of 

“hearts and minds,” a new awareness of the global 

information space and a commensurate expansion 

of activities often defined as “soft” (i.e., invariably 

non-kinetic in nature and clearly delineated from the 

more traditional application of controlled violence by 

military forces). A new and often confusing lexicon has simultaneously grown, with terms such as 

“strategic communication” and “influence” rising to 

prominence. 

These developments have not been without controversy. Both within the military establishment and 

outside of it, there have been notable critics. U.S. military academic Colonel (Retired) Gian Gentile wrote in 

Small Wars Journal: “We are placing the cart of convincing [soft effects] before the horse of killing [hard 

effects] and in so doing we are quickly losing our way 

as an Army of the free world,”7

 while Lieutenant Colonel (Retired) John L. Cook, U.S. Army, wrote: 

The strategy being employed by the coalition places 

a higher value on the lives of Afghan civilians than 

the lives of American soldiers—these are the rules of 

engagement designed to win the hearts and minds of 

the Afghan civilians.8

The media, too, have been highly critical of the 

manner in which soft effects had been pursued. Tom 

Vanden Brook of the USA Today newspaper is a long 

standing critic of the Department of Defense (DoD) Informational Operations (IO) efforts. In February 2012, 

he published an investigative article about the cost of 

U.S. IO writing that:
4

From 2005 to 2009, such spending rose from $9 million 

to $580 million a year mostly in Iraq [as] Afghanistan, 

Pentagon and congressional records show. . . . A USA 

TODAY investigation, based on dozens of interviews 

and a series of internal military reports, shows that 

Pentagon officials have little proof the programs work 

and they won’t make public where the money goes.9

In November 2012, in the same paper, he wrote: 

Since 2000, the military has paid The Rendon Group 

more than $100 million to help shape its communications strategy, analyze media coverage, run its propaganda programs, and develop counter-narcotics 

efforts around the world.10

Vanden Brook went on to quote U.S. Army Colonel 

Paul Yingling, who served three tours in Iraq between 

2003 and 2009 as an IO specialist, as describing IO at 

the time as “doing posters, fliers or radio ads. These 

things are unserious.”11

Because of his persistently critical coverage, Vanden Brook’s reporting is often dismissed by the DoD’s 

IO community, however, there have also been some 

officially sponsored studies that have appeared to 

echo at least some of his criticism. In May 2012, for 

example, RAND published US Military Information 

Operations In Afghanistan: Effectiveness of Psychological 

Operations 2001-2010,”12 a report commissioned by the 

U.S. Marine Corps (USMC). This paper’s single most 

important conclusion was that: 

. . . if the overall Information Operation (IO) mission 

in Afghanistan is defined as convincing most residents 

of contested areas to side decisively with the Afghan 

government and its foreign allies against the Taliban 

insurgency, this has not been achieved. 
5

This came just a year after the U.S. House Appropriations Committee had threatened to deduct $125 

million from the $300 million that was being sought 

in the 2012 Defense Appropriations Bill for Military 

Information Support Operations (MISO) support. Realistically, this was probably never a serious threat, 

more an internal “red flag” to DoD and MISO communities, drawing attention to what many were concerned was a potentially failing enterprise and which 

Congress feared was lacking proper oversight and 

accountability. 

Soon after, and with perhaps unfortunate timing, 

an unrelated and later regretted public proclamation 

that strategic communication was ending burst onto 

the scene in the so called “Little Memo”13 written by 

George Little, Assistant to the Secretary for Defense 

for Public Affairs. This publicly (and apparently unilaterally) stated that strategic communication added a 

“layer of staffing and planning that blurred the roles 

and functions of traditional staff elements and blurred 

understanding . . . as a result of this we stood down 

these staff elements.” Commentators from across the 

IO community responded unhappily to the memo on 

message boards and blogs. From the U.S. Joint Information Operations Warfare Center (JIOWC), Richard 

Josten declared on the Strategic Communication forum of LinkedIn that: 

Many of the problems associated with Strategic Communication come from the term itself. Too many consider it to be about marketing and too many consider 

it to be about communications with an ‘S’.14
6

Senior DoD official and former journalist Rosa Brooks, 

in her public response to the memo, stated that:

. . . this latest memo is just another shot fired in the 

ongoing skirmish between those who believe that 

strategic communication is merely an unnecessary euphemism for ‘communications’—meaning, basically, 

press statements and talking points—and thus should 

be controlled by public affairs offices, and those who 

believe strategic communication is a confusing term, 

but one that has nonetheless come to stand for something complex and important, something that has 

more to do with strategy than with communications.15

Mark Laity, Chief of Strategic Communications 

(SC) at North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) 

Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe 

(SHAPE) wrote that: 

It has taken us huge amounts of effort to get nearly 

30 NATO nations [to] agree to a policy, and for years 

we’ve been out there arguing for and explaining the 

Strategic Communication mindset. Now I’m meant to 

say, ‘Hey Heads of State, me and the guys have been 

chatting and think we should change the name.’ The 

term is bigger than us, the clean piece of paper has 

writing scrawled all over it. Changing the name just 

hits the reset button and we start all over. The new 

‘communication synchronization’ highlights the danger of meddling with the term—Little introduced it 

precisely to kill Strategic Communication. It’s a narrow, limited, un-ambitious phrase intended to redefine and belittle what Strategic Communication did/

does in order to say it’s not needed.16

With the cessation of operations in Afghanistan imminent but still no clear outcome apparent, the outside observer might be forgiven for thinking that U.S. 
7

governmental SC efforts, and in particular DoD IO, 

are under some form of existential stress. The fortunes 

of U.S. IO and SC are inextricably linked to those of 

other NATO nations, and it is with some concern, although perhaps not surprise, that these events have 

been viewed from other capitals, specifically London, 

England; Canberra, Australia; and the NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, with deep concern. For 

those in the wider global SC and IO communities engaged in the same war of ideas as the United States, 

the idea of America sneezing and Europe catching a 

cold, a rather over-used if still apt metaphor, has never been more important.

THE TYRANNY OF TERMINOLOGY 

One of the inhibitors to nuanced discussion about 

this subject is the tyranny of terminology—the large 

number of new terms and definitions, often used interchangeably, that have arisen since 2001. For the 

purposes of this monograph, the following terminology is used; where not otherwise stated, the definitions 

are the author’s own.

Information Operations. 

US DoD Joint Publication (JP) 3-13, Information Operations,

17 defines IO as integrated employment during 

military operations of information related capabilities 

(IRCs) in concert with other lines of operation to influence, disrupt, corrupt, or usurp the decisionmaking of 

adversaries and potential adversaries while protecting our own capabilities.
8

Military Information Support Operations.

JP 3-13 defines MISO as planned operations to 

convey selected information and indicators to foreign 

audiences to influence their emotions, motives, objective reasoning, and ultimately the behavior of foreign 

governments, organizations, groups, and individuals 

in a manner favorable to the originator’s objectives. In 

the rest of NATO, this function is still referred to by 

its former name, Psychological Operations (PsyOps).

Target Audience Analysis.

Target Audience Analysis (TAA) is an empirical 

process in which the motivations for specific group 

behavior are analyzed, using qualitative and quantitative research methods.

Influence. 

(noun): the inherent understanding that all Diplomatic, Information, Military & Economic (DIME) activities have the potential to influence the behaviors 

and attitudes of specific groups.

(verb): the application of specific activities to a target audience to influence behaviors and attitudes.

(It should be noted that U.S. DoD Field Manual 

(FM) 3-13, Inform and Influence Activities, issued January 2013, has now specifically removed a doctrinal 

definition of “influence” per se but offers an explanation of what it might constitute: 

Influence activities typically focus on persuading selected foreign audiences to support US objectives or 

to persuade those audiences to stop supporting the 

adversary or enemy.
9

Strategic Communication.

U.S. JP 1-0218 defines SC as focused U.S. Government efforts to understand and engage key audiences 

to create, strengthen, or preserve conditions favorable 

for the advancement of U.S. Government interests, 

policies, and objectives through the use of coordinated programs, plans, themes, messages, and products 

synchronized with the actions of all instruments of 

national power.

In previous iterations of U.S. IO doctrine, IRCs 

were specifically named. These were Operational Security (OPSEC), Military Deception (MILDEC), Electronic Warfare (EW), and Computer Network Operations (CNO). However, all of these fall well beyond 

the threshold for unclassified discussion and, while 

there can be no debate about their relevance on the 

operational field of battle, it is more debatable how 

they directly contribute (with the exception of CNO) 

to U.S. SC efforts and therefore will not be discussed 

here. So, too, Public Affairs, which, while clearly a key 

element of SC, is mainly concerned with “informing” 

audiences, and typically domestic ones at that. Therefore, this monograph will focus its analysis on MISO/

PsyOps, which, as noted by FM 3-13, is the commanders “primary capability to influence foreign populations in the areas of operations” in order to “persuade 

selected foreign audiences to support US objectives 

or to persuade those audiences to stop supporting 

the adversary or enemy.” That analysis must begin 

with a brief critique of past performance and three 

case studies, two from Afghanistan and the other 

from Pakistan.
10

CASE STUDY 1 - AFGHANISTAN

In November 2011, the author attended a meeting 

in International Security and Assistance Force (ISAF) 

Headquarters (HQ) in Kabul, Afghanistan, to discuss 

a possible information operation to reduce the number of young men of fighting age who were joining the 

insurgency. The pilot plan, to pay young Afghan men 

of fighting age in certain provinces a wedding dowry 

of up to $6,000, had been introduced by a contractor to 

a senior U.S. flag officer. In a clever coup, it appeared 

to the inexperienced (in IO matters) general that ISAF 

would take huge swathes of fighters off the battlefield 

by facilitating their marriages to eligible young Afghan women. All it took was money—and lots of it. 

The plan, presented by the International Council on 

Security and Development (ICOS) promised four outcomes from the plan: 

1. To identify those individuals who are the most 

vulnerable socially, and prevented from marrying due 

to lack of financial resources;

2. To test the receptiveness of the local population 

towards the program;

3. To identify mechanisms for preventing fraud in 

delivering the grants; and,

4. To evaluate the effectiveness of the project, as 

measured by a change of attitudes of program participants regarding their role in the community.

The author was asked to evaluate the plan. The 

first objection was money: The author demonstrated 

to the command that the cost of the program (from the 

150-person pilot through to all eligible Helmandi males 

and then on across the country) would quickly exceed 

U.S.$4 billion per year. A number of other problems 
11

were also identified. First, the plan was based on the 

assumption that married men would be less inclined 

to join the insurgency; yet the marital status of most 

of the detainees held in coalition detention facilities 

suggested this assumption was not valid. Second, according to the contractor, the measure of effect of the 

program would be a change in attitudes. As shown 

later, attitudes are highly temporal and are all but impossible to measure accurately. Were I an Afghan male 

who had just been given $6000, I would undoubtedly 

be hugely grateful. But for how long and to what effect? But what if I was were an Afghan male who had 

not been given the $6000? The prospect of this last factor was of most concern, for it would see huge injections of unearned cash into small micro-communities, 

with all the attendant second- and third-order effects 

that would inevitably follow: corruption, jealousy, 

and feuds. In summarizing the assessment of the plan, 

this author was compelled to write that: 

. . . there is no empirical research to suggest that this is 

a sensible solution to deterring young men of fighting 

age from joining the insurgency. Even if there were, 

it would be cost prohibitive and open to such widespread and pernicious abuse as to render it unworkable.19

It was quite clear from the stony-faced reaction of 

the general and the urgent protestations of the contractor that this was not the answer desired. Fortunately, several weeks later, wiser heads prevailed, and 

the program was cancelled on the grounds of cost, if 

none of the other attendant issues.
12

CASE STUDY 2 - PAKISTAN

In September 2012, the U.S. Government purchased advertising slots on Pakistani national television to denounce the controversial and offensive antiIslamic video, The Innocence of Muslims, featuring the 

prophet Mohammed. This initiative followed huge 

demonstrations near the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, 

and outbreaks of anti-American violence elsewhere 

including the murder of the U.S. Ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens. The advertisement included 

statements by President Barack Obama and then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton criticizing the film. 

The advertising campaign bore a striking resemblance to a previous U.S. communication campaign 

run by commercial marketer Charlotte Beers. Beers 

was the instigator of a $15 million marketing campaign entitled “Shared Values,” which, following the 

September 11, 2001 (9/11) attacks, produced a series 

of TV advertisements depicting the daily lives of U.S. 

Muslims. The program was launched in Indonesia, 

the world’s most populous Muslim country, but failed 

to find outlets in the Middle East; many in the Arab 

world belittled the campaign as simple-minded and 

condescending. Media reports both abroad and in the 

United States were generally negative, and the project 

was widely viewed as crude propaganda. Both CNN

and The Wall Street Journal reported that the initiative 

had totally failed to connect with Muslim audiences. 

Beers was more upbeat, claiming that the campaign 

had been successful because it had started a dialogue. No formal quantitative evaluation of the campaign was ever made public, which perhaps in itself 

calls into question the optimistic interpretation of its 

achievements. In March 2003, Beers resigned from the 
13

State Department, and the project collapsed. Given 

the similarity between the 2012 TV advertisements 

and the Beers’ campaign, it would appear the ideas 

behind it did not collapse. 

In assessing the Pakistan TV advertisements, a 

number of questions arise, chiefly about accessibility 

and reach. First, of the large body of people who chose 

to riot, probably only a very tiny percentage had actually seen the offending video. The video is 74 minutes 

in duration and a little over 400-megabytes (MB) in 

size. ”Highlights” could therefore have been available 

to smart phones, but it would be next to impossible 

to view properly without access to the web. While Internet penetration in Pakistan is undeniably growing, 

literacy in Pakistan is still less than 55 percent, and 

around 30 to 40 percent of the population live beneath 

the poverty line, which suggests limited access to the 

Internet via computer. At the same time, viewing the 

U.S. response required both access to a TV set and 

the ability either to understand English or to read the 

superimposed Urdu script. It is a reasonable supposition, therefore, that many of the rioters had probably 

never seen the original video, nor the presidential address that followed, and that their knowledge of its existence was largely second hand, transmitted through 

trusted community leaders and/or social networks 

such as mosques. 

Secondly, the anger over the video was all the more 

intense because it aligned with the ongoing manifestation of the wider and very long-standing “U.S. hates 

Muslims” narrative. It joined an already long list of 

perceived injustices, including the Palestine Iraq, and 

Afghanistan conflicts, as well as the past desecration 

of Korans. In this context, it seems optimistic that a 

few words in a TV advertisement from the U.S. Presi-
14

dent, the embodiment of the western “infidel,” could 

appease an enraged mob.

Third, the objective of the advertisements was ostensibly to reduce undesired behavior. The President 

stated in the advertisement that the video did not reflect U.S. views or U.S. policy. He further stated that 

the United States respected the Islamic religion and 

Muslims. In short, the President sought to change 

people’s attitudes toward the United States in the 

hope that their behavior, the rioting, would stop. 

Given the widespread acceptance of the “U.S. hates 

Muslims” narrative that pervades the Islamic world, 

this appears ambitious. More relevantly, it ignored a 

considerable body of social science research accrued 

over many years which indicates that attitudes are not 

strong precursors to behavioral change. Achieving an 

understanding of how to mitigate and reduce behavior is extremely difficult.

The advertisements were not, of course, the sole 

U.S. response to the video. Ever since President 

Obama’s 2009 “New Beginning” speech in Cairo, 

Egypt, the United States has been trying to rebuild its 

image in the Arab and Muslim world. However, the 

advertising campaign did cost the U.S. taxpayer significant amounts of money, and, yet it can be argued 

that from the outset, the chances of success were debatable. Indeed, subsequently ABC news reported on 

September 21, 2012, that: 

Deadly anti-U.S. protests erupted in Pakistan despite 

an unusual ad on Pakistani TV featuring President 

Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton denouncing the movie Innocence of Muslims, the antiIslam video that has fueled much of the Pakistani 

fury. The ads have been running this week on seven 

different Pakistani television stations in an attempt to 
15

cool tempers over the film, but today’s protests were 

the largest seen so far since the controversy began in 

Pakistan last week with the attempted storming of the 

US embassy.20

Neither of the preceding case studies is intended 

to belittle U.S. attempts—indeed, far from it. Unlike 

many other countries, the United States is at least prepared to take risks and attempt new ideas. But both 

demonstrate very starkly the difficulties that have beset the United States in the past 12 years: susceptibility to ambitious contractors, an absence of “intelligent 

customers,”21 and an apparent absence of understanding how communication can, and cannot, be realistically employed to mitigate crisis and conflict.

CASE STUDY 3 - AFGHANISTAN

What might proper behaviorally-based campaigns 

in Afghanistan have looked like? In April 2011, the 

author toured ISAF HQ in Kabul, offering up nine 

behavioral campaigns to meet immediate operational problems. One, designed to improve retention in 

the Afghanistan National Security Forces (ANSF), is 

summarized here.

Background.

ISAF will struggle to build the ANSF the country 

needs with current retention rates. Lieutenant General 

William Caldwell has stated that “based on current attrition rates, to expand security forces by 56,000, we 

will need to recruit 133,000.”22
16

Methodology.

First, undertake qualitative and quantitative TAA 

to determine the facts that influence ANSF leaving 

what are, for Afghan society, well-paid jobs. Second, 

instigate behavioral interventions to increase retention. In order to complete these tasks, it will be necessary to interview serving ANSF, those who have 

already left and the communities from which they 

are drawn.

Costs.

Timing.

The TAA process will take approximately 3 

months, the analysis approximately 2 months. The influence program will extend over 18 months, with first 

measures of effectiveness (MOE) being made available 

at the 12-month point.

600 Quantitative questionnaires per district. 

Unit cost $30.

$90,000

80 Qualitative interviews per district. Total 

400. Unit cost of $334

$133,600

2 focus group discussions per district. Total 

10. Unit cost of $3,340

$33,400

10 Subject Matter Expert interviews per district. Unit cost $334$16,700

Data analysis and production of influence 

plan

$250,000

Total cost of analysis $557,780
17

Deliverables.

The program is divided into three parts. The TAA 

and Influence Intervention plan are provided by contractors. The influence intervention is undertaken by 

NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan (NTM[A]) with 

ISAF Combined Joint Psychological Operations Task 

Force (CJPOTF) support.

Proposed Behavioral Program.

The other behaviorally based programs suggested 

included disruption of the narcotics supply chain, promotion of alternative livelihoods, and increased Pashtun recruiting into the ANSF. In total, each behavioral 

campaign cost approximately $500,000, a tiny amount 

in comparison to the estimated $3.6 billion a month23

that the United States has been spending in Afghanistan and the multi-million dollar contracts awarded to 

contractors for attitudinal marketing campaigns. 

What was remarkable about the proposed behavioral program was that it met with universal acceptance across the ISAF military community as a worthwhile idea, and yet never happened. A great many 

other companies have contractors embedded in the 

U.S. and ISAF command chains—it failed to pass their 

scrutiny. Other explanations for this failure included 

the following: 

1. This program was not the invention of the contracting companies, and neither would they be generating revenue by running it; 

2. The final results of the program would not be 

known for at least 12 months—in other words, after 

most people involved had left the theater; and, 
18

3. The weight of ISAF bureaucracy required a program of this nature to be fully costed, tendered, evaluated, and approved years ahead in order to meet the 

requirements of budgets and resource accounting. 

What is demonstrated by these three case studies is that the implementation, or otherwise, of an IO 

program, as with much else in western militaries and 

governments, can depend less on its assessed outcome 

than on expediency, bureaucracy, and vested interests. 

The remainder of this monogram proposes a means of 

mitigating this situation. 

THE SCIENCE OF COMMUNICATION

Despite the enormous number of theories seeking 

to explain the nature of human communication, most 

broadly agree that communication, whatever its form, 

is designed to be either informative or persuasive, or 

a synergy of the two. For example, a roadside speed 

sign is designed to inform drivers of the local vehicle 

speed limit and, by implication, encourage them to 

abide by it. While many people may obey the sign, 

particularly if it is supplemented by the additional 

detail of a school or playground being close by (thus 

providing a rationale for the limit), many others may 

not. Their conformity might, however, be ensured if 

there is a speed camera present—their behavior now 

moderated not by concern for pedestrians, but by the 

threat of a speeding ticket and/or fine. 

In the United Kingdom (UK), there has been a 

concerted move over recent decades to reduce traffic 

speed limits to 20 miles per hour in built-up areas. Yet, 

where this has occurred, the accident rate, perhaps 

counterintuitively, has actually gone up. According 
19

to the UK’s Department of Transport,24 this is because 

motorists have become frustrated with the slow pace 

of travel, while at the same time, pedestrians have become complacent and have not paid necessary attention to the traffic. It is only where speed cameras have 

been installed that accident rates have actually gone 

down. So we can conclude from this very simple example that attitudinal and informational communication (the speed restriction signs) may work with some 

people but cannot be guaranteed for the majority of 

the people. Indeed, there may well be second- and 

third-order effects of this communication that were 

never considered or anticipated—in this example, 

pedestrians becoming complacent and drivers angry. 

This vignette shows that even in the simplest cases, 

communication is by no means an easy subject to understand.

Long experience of communicating in crisis and 

conflict environments has shown that three broad 

types of communication products are deployed 

through MISO activity: Informational, Attitudinal, 

and Behavioral. Understanding how each is used to 

best advantage is seminal to understanding why U.S. 

communication efforts have been so problematic in 

the wars since 2001. This understanding is not helped 

by a considerable amount of academic literature providing often conflicting advice and guidance. Take, 

for example, RAND’s 2005 study: Dissuading Terror. 

Strategic Influence and Struggle against Terrorism [sic]. 

The paper’s authors declare that: 

influence campaigns can produce a variety of 

real-world behaviors . . . . But before an operation 

can produce these behaviors it must first alter the target audiences’ attitudes, opinions, reasoning and/or 

emotions.25
20

Yet this would appear to be diametrically at odds 

with the conclusions of a 2010 paper by Professors 

William Hutchinson and Mathew Warren, Influence 

Operations and Behavioural Change. This paper asserts 

that the relationship between attitudes and behaviors 

is “challenging” and that “evidence showing [that] 

attitudes lead to behaviors is weak, whereas evidence showing [that] behaviour leads to attitudes is 

stronger.”26 With such apparent confusion over what 

should be targeted, it is perhaps understandable that 

the United States might question the very worth of 

such programs. However, it is this author’s view that 

understanding how each is used to its best advantage 

is seminal to understanding why U.S. communication and wider ISAF efforts have been so problematic in Afghanistan and is key to their employment in 

future conflict.

Informational Communication.

As the name suggests, informational communication conveys a piece of information from a source to an 

audience that may not previously have been known. 

In the context of military operations in Afghanistan, 

informational communication is regularly deployed. 

For example, ISAF may wish to explain to local Afghans why a forward operating base (FOB) is being 

expanded or reduced; why military vehicles should 

not be tailgated by civilian cars; of new school or community reconstruction projects being undertaken in 

the area; or, indeed, of the telephone number for the 

confidential telephone Tip Line to report insurgent 

activities. All are perfectly valid and fall within the 

NATO definition of PsyOps/MISO: truthful and at-
21

tributable activity directed at an approved target audience. A good example of an informational poster, 

albeit one designed to elicit a behavioral response, 

was produced but never deployed by British Forces in 

Afghanistan in July 2011 when a British soldier went 

missing (see Figure 1).27 The poster informed the local population that a British serviceman was missing 

and what he would look like. The audience’s attention 

is brought to the 110 Confidential Tip Line. Clearly, 

this poster is designed to encourage behavior (to find 

the missing serviceman), but, at its heart, it is informational, not least as the area in which the soldier was 

missing was immediately flooded with ISAF troops 

and the local populace would have been puzzled, perhaps even concerned, at their presence. 

Figure 1. British Missing Soldier.
22

Informational Communication is a vital component in a COIN environment, particularly one in 

which the insurgent will take every opportunity to 

twist the interpretation of events to his advantage. 

The insurgent, typically, is unconcerned with either 

accuracy or veracity of message, while, for COIN operatives, there are conflicting imperatives being first 

with the truth while balancing the need to constantly 

and promptly keep the contested population abreast 

of current events. 

Attitudinal Communication.

This type of communication seeks to either reinforce positive attitudes or dislodge negative attitudes 

in discrete target audiences. In NATO’s mission to 

Afghanistan, it is perhaps best exemplified by the 

twin and long standing projects of roadside billboards 

and newspapers. Across Afghanistan, there are some 

296 centrally funded billboards, maintained at a cost 

of U.S.$4.9 million per year, which are used to promote the government of Afghanistan and the notion 

of “good” governance. However, this centrally funded figure is just the tip of the iceberg; in Wardak and 

Logar provinces, for example, there were 150 different billboards paid for by at least four separate DoD 

actors in 2009-10; so too in Helmand and Kandahar, 

all created, printed, and maintained at considerable 

expense. At the same time ISAF produces a newspaper entitled Sada-e Azadi28 which, in three languages, 

seeks to present to literate Afghans a post-insurgency 

view of their country in a magazine format. The image shown in Figure 2 is an example of an attitudinal 

type PsyOps leaflet. A soldier of the Afghan National 

Army (ANA), and two policemen, one from the Af-
23

ghan National Police (ANP) and one from the Afghan 

Local Police (ALP) are shown side by side, the reassuring message beneath suggesting that they all have 

a common aim for the benefit of the populace. Clearly 

there is an implicit behavior encouraged by this poster—“support the organs of organic Afghan security, 

not the Taliban.” 

Figure 2. ANP, ANA, and ALP Attitudes.
24

Another example is this roadside poster in Helmand. (See Figure 3.) The poster reads: “Poppy. Poppy 

is damaging the Pashtun’s house, country, community 

and future generations. What do you think? Contact 

us on this number.” This is clearly designed to change 

attitudes and encourage debate that will ultimately 

lead to the demise of poppy cultivation—a key wish 

for the international community. Yet it might be argued that far from “damaging the Pashtun’s house,” 

poppy shores it up by being extremely profitable, providing a source of income to farmers that they would 

not be able to derive from vegetables, fruit, and wheat. 

Indeed, Lieutenant Colonel (Retired) John L. Cook believes that in Helmand and Kandahar: “The poppy is 

king providing, either directly or indirectly, nearly 

80% of all jobs in these provinces.”29

Figure 3. Roadside Poppy Poster.
25

In many areas of Afghanistan, the poppy poster 

may be a message that resonates with Afghans, but 

this is certainly not a uniform response, and neither is 

the response to the previous example highlighting the 

ANSF. Thus we can suggest, with some confidence, 

that this type of attitudinal product depends heavily upon the temporal circumstances of the audience. 

They may have had good experiences of the police and 

feel reassured by the poster. They may think poppy 

cultivation is wrong and want to do something about 

it. Alternatively, they may have had poor experiences 

with the police, or they may make a healthy yearly 

profit from opium production. In these circumstances, 

the posters would seem irrelevant and detract from 

the credibility of the Afghan government rather than 

enhancing it. 

Behavioral Communication.

This type of communication is seen as the “Holy 

Grail” of IO, and, in many instances, seems just as elusive. Behavioral communication is completely focused 

on mitigating or encouraging specific and pre-determined behaviors. For example, a MISO campaign may 

be used to directly target the trafficking of drugs, or 

to boost retention among the Afghan National Army. 

However, behavioral communication can also be surprisingly effective in changing attitudes, particularly 

when they are deployed subtly and with discretion. 

Attitudinal communication is invariably obvious, 

“in your face,” and its intent also obvious—it can 

be quickly discarded as mere propaganda. Nuanced 

behavioral campaigns cannot be so discarded. This 

stratagem was utilized to great effect during, for example, President Barack Obama’s “Change” campaign. Working closely with behavioral psychologists, 
26

the campaign team generated a social media “viral” 

meme that aimed to excite people into turning up at 

Obama’s rallies. It worked by suggesting to locals that 

record numbers of supporters were to turn up, and it 

would be an incredible spectacle to behold. The idea 

behind this approach was that the very act of attending the rallies—even for non-Obama supporters and 

fence-sitters—would be so emotionally arousing and 

stimulating that people would form fresh positive attitudes towards Obama, and subsequently vote for 

him. The resulting election results bear testament to 

the idea’s validity. 

In truth the invented term “behavioral communication” is a slight misnomer. As we have seen, attitudinal and informational communication can have 

both implicit and explicit behavioral consequences—

although, as will be demonstrated in a moment, the 

perceived wisdom that attitudes lead directly to behaviors is not borne out in scientific studies, indeed, 

just the opposite. So it is not so much “behavioral 

communication” as a discreet term that is deployed, 

but activities and actions in support of specific behavioral objectives, and as this monograph will show, has 

for a very long time been secondary in U.S. thinking 

and practice to mitigating and changing people’s attitudes and perceptions. 

This monograph suggests that imperfect understanding of the different types of communication and 

their likely outcome lies at the root of U.S. and wider 

Western failure in prosecuting IO. The naïve and unquestioning implementation of TV campaigns such 

as the Pakistani TV advertisements described earlier 

is costly, especially given that the impact or effect 

sought—behavioral change—is so uncertain. It is this 

author’s view that, in any conflict environment, it is 
27

the physical behavior of different groups that determine outcomes. Yet, it would appear that the bulk of 

effort and expenditure to date has been directed at attitudinal communications in the hope that they will 

engender positive behavioral change. Indeed, detailed 

reading of U.S. and wider NATO doctrine reveals that 

the focus of activity is still the communication of information and messages (and hence a focus upon 

attitudes). For example, the newly released FM 3-13 

provides nearly two pages of guidance (pp. 1.3-1.5) 

on messaging, provides a message development flowchart that is entirely top-down and without any reference to the proposed audience. Or put another way, 

it is entirely sender oriented with a presumption that 

the message will get through if you just transmit it in 

the right way. This is often referred to as the “message-influence” model and may be represented as 

in Figure 4.

Figure 4. The Message Influence Model.

However, we know even from our own interpersonal communication that this is a far too simplistic 

model, that there are significant factors that might 

complicate and corrupt the message. The Center for 
28

Strategic Communication at Arizona State University 

published a detailed study of these complicating factors in 2008 entitled Strategic Communication on a Rugged Landscape.30 Like many other studies, they demonstrated that the message sent very often was not the 

message received, its receipt and understanding being 

heavily contextualized by background attitudes and 

perceptions. (See Figure 5.)

Figure 5. Pragmatic Communication Model.

It is rare to hear senior officers talk of behaviors 

but exceptionally common to hear discussion of perceptions. For example, something as seemingly measurable as “support for ISAF” must manifest itself 

ultimately in behavioral terms. How can we possibly 

know there is support for our troops if we were not 

observing specific types (or absence) of behaviors? It 
29

would be meager satisfaction if opinion polls indicated that support for ISAF was buoyant, and yet there 

was no evidence of that actual support on the ground. 

THE MISPLACED REASSURANCE 

OF ADVERTISEMENTS

In peaceful western societies, attitudinal communication, which is the basis for most commercial advertising and marketing, is largely used to differentiate between competing product brands. One brand 

of toothpaste, for example, is not significantly different to another, but if you associate to it through an 

attitudinal marketing campaign, certain “desirable” 

qualities or characteristics (for example, extra whitening capability, pleasant breath qualities, etc.), you 

effectively differentiate it from your competitors in 

the eyes of the consumer who is now more likely to 

purchase your brand. As a consumer walking into a 

supermarket, you will be confronted by an array of 

different toothpastes, and your decision to purchase 

may well be swayed by an advertisement you have 

seen for a particular brand. However, it is important to 

remember that the consumer, by their presence in the 

toothpaste aisle of the supermarket, has already made 

a decision in their mind to make a purchase; their 

behavior has already been set. Indeed, that behavior 

would have been pre-determined by their upbringing 

(always clean your teeth before bed), their education 

(not cleaning your teeth will cause you painful medical problems), and other social or cultural factors (for 

example, guys with bad breath don’t get girls!). All 

the advertiser has to do is switch the consumer’s behavior from one brand to another—the key is that the 

consumer was already going to buy toothpaste. But, as 
30

will be shown, this is not the situation in which populations in crisis and conflict situations find themselves.

There is much dispute among psychologists over 

what attitudes are, although what they are not is often 

easier to understand: they are not values or beliefs, 

and not really opinions, which are often terms used 

interchangeably with attitudes. In practical terms, 

this means that attitudes are very difficult, in fact all 

but impossible, to measure accurately as they are influenced by so many other compounding variables. 

Surveys that ask if an individual is: “slightly happier, 

much happier or considerably happier” with a particular issue are popular, but of limited validity, since 

it is almost impossible to delineate such trends across 

sample groups. This will be examined again in the context of MOEs for IO campaigns. But perhaps the single 

biggest problem with the use of attitudes is the now 

significant body of scientific evidence that indicates 

they bear so little relation to behavior and ultimately, 

as already asserted, in conflict-ridden societies it is 

undesirable behavior that the military must mitigate. 

There are numerous studies that show this to be the 

case.31 Because the West is a heavily consumer-based 

society, advertisements and marketing are accepted as 

an everyday part of daily life. Indeed, it was this very 

issue that prompted former U.S. Ambassador Richard 

Holbrooke’s comment, “How can a man in a cave outcommunicate the world’s leading communications 

society?”32 in reaction to Bin Laden, al-Qaeda, and the 

Taliban’s insistent and seemingly compelling rhetoric. 

Although superficially there would appear to be two 

competing brands in Afghanistan, the Taliban and the 

Afghan government, Afghanistan is not a peaceful 

western democracy, with potential “consumers” waiting to make a choice. 
31

While the Government of the Islamic Republic of 

Afghanistan (GIRoA) and ISAF may bring reconstruction projects, it might also be argued that they also 

bring corruption and a return of the hated warlords. 

Where the Taliban may have mistreated women and 

banned music, enjoyment, fun, and all those attributes 

that make life complete, it might also be argued that 

they bring efficient and quick justice, that they are not 

“foreigners” and, perhaps most importantly, are seen 

to be less corrupt than GIRoA. Afghans, unlike U.S. 

consumers, are not compliant audiences waiting to be 

steered in a particular direction like the metaphorical 

toothpaste consumer, nor do NATO PsyOps necessarily reflect what is actually happening on the ground. 

The example of ISAF roadside billboards illustrates 

this point. The billboard in Figure 6 extols the virtue 

and loyalty of the Afghan National Security Forces 

and is clearly designed to inspire confidence among 

those who see it. This would be valid in a compliant 

society, one in which the rule of law is the norm. Yet in 

a society where corruption is endemic, where successful passage through a checkpoint will almost certainly 

require the giving of some money, such attitudinal 

communication does not stack up against the pragmatic reality of life on the ground. 
32

Figure 6. Bill Board ANSF.

For the nonsocial scientist, a simple consideration 

of many circumstances in our own lives will lead us 

to the same conclusions. An illustrative example is 

that for many years governments sought to persuade 

drivers of the positive benefits of wearing a seat belt 

when in the car through various attitudinal and informational advertisements which highlight the death 

and injury rates for car passengers not wearing seat 

belts. Yet these largely failed, and it took compulsory 

enforcement (punishable by a fine) through legislation to make the wearing of seat belts an accepted and 

unconscious activity. Today, particularly if you are 

North European, it is almost guaranteed that drivers 

put on a seat belt as an unconscious act as soon as they 

get into a car and will point out, often disapprovingly, 

if they see someone not wearing one. 

This example reinforces Hutchinson and Warren’s 

2010 conclusions on “Influence Operations and Behavioural Change”33 as noted earlier, while attitude is 

a poor precursor to behavior, behavior is actually a 
33

very strong precursor to attitude. Or in other words, 

if you change behavior, even in noncomplaint audiences, there is a good chance that, with time, their attitude will follow suit—as in the example of the seatbelt. Because the West is so attuned to and accepting 

of attitudinal communication that it takes a real leap of 

faith to convince military commanders that advertisements and marketing will not achieve the operational 

effect they seek. But new developments in behavioral 

communication, facilitated through social science and 

behavioral economic research, provide a new avenue 

that deserves much greater senior attention and which 

may actually dismiss advertising and marketing as 

MISO concepts from the battlefield. 

This will run counter to many previous high profile studies. In 2007, Todd Helmus, Christopher Paul, 

and Russell Glenn produced Enlisting Madison Avenue: 

The Marketing Approach to Earning Popular Support in 

Theaters of Operation.

34 This report declared that: “Business marketing practices provide a useful framework 

for improving US military efforts to shape attitudes 

and behaviors of local populations.” In particular, 

the paper declared that attention should be paid to 

“branding, customer satisfaction, and segmentation of 

audiences.” The segmentation of audiences is a standard marketing technique that looks to sub-divide a 

specific sector of known consumers—perhaps based 

on demographics or income or postal address—in the 

hope that the characteristics of this segmented group 

will be susceptible to a specific marketing campaign. 

However this is very much a “push” activity and the 

“group” is actually an artificial construct that exists 

only on the marketer’s spreadsheet. In military operations, the groups are real, bonded by a myriad of 

factors outside our control. It would be wonderful if, 
34

for example, the U.S. IO job could be done by targeting only the affluent, or the middle-aged, or women 

in a specific area. But in theaters of operations, the 

U.S. and its allies do not have the luxury of choosing 

groups, the United States has to deal with groups that 

have self-selected—for example, the Mhadi army in 

southern Iraq or the Haqqani network in Afghanistan. 

The job for the IO community is to understand the 

actual group as it exists, not invent a new one, and 

to decode the circumstances under which that group 

may be motivated to exhibit (or not) a specific behavior. This is the process of TAA, and it is very different 

from the market segmentation used in advertising. 

Commercial marketing and advertising methods are 

designed to increase the hit rate of customers in a target group. A conversion rate of 10 percent (i.e., 1 in 10 

buying a different brand of car or toothpaste) would 

be considered outstanding and for a large company 

may well prove highly profitable. But in military operations achieving a 10 percent change in the behavior 

of, say, an insurgent group or a hostile community is 

highly unlikely to be game changing in the context of 

the wider conflict. 

Another factor that derives from advertising being 

a very well-understood and accepted concept in the 

very heavily commercialized western world is that 

there exists an arguable unwritten contract between 

marketer and potential customer. For example, some 

of the most popular TV shows have the longest advertising segments. Consumers watch these programs 

with an implicit acceptance of the advertisements. 

They are watched in the full knowledge that companies are trying to persuade the consumer to buy more 

of their products. But this contract does not translate 

to the battlefield. Indeed, in Positioning: The Battle for 
35

your Mind35—one of the most successful marketing 

books of all time—the authors clearly make the point 

that marketing cannot change the way that people 

think. As the Associate Director of the Pew Global 

Attitudes Project recently wrote: 

negative views of America remain stubbornly persistent in key Muslim countries. Much of this animosity 

is due to continuing concerns about U.S. power and 

widespread opposition to major elements of American 

foreign policy.”36

In short, many Muslims, moderate or otherwise, believe very strongly and implicitly that the United 

States is at war with Islam. 

That they do is largely the result of the creation of 

a single narrative, a version of history that emphasizes Islam’s struggle against victimization. It is highly 

selective and the extent to which it is accepted by its 

audience—like any communication—depends largely 

upon their circumstance, in particular their education 

and their existing view of the world. However, it is 

undeniably compelling, and it is around this that alQaeda and its associates build the legitimacy of their 

actions. The narrative is based on an interpretation of 

both historical events and theological references, but 

at its heart is the fact that Islam is the last revelation 

of God—for it post-dated Christ by over 1,400 years. 

Since it is the last revelation, so the narrative goes, it 

must therefore be the final and absolute word of God, 

and to deviate from it is heretical. The narrative’s authors have long memories. They note, for example, 

that Pope Urban II (1042-99) launched the crusades 

in 1095, besieging and slaughtering the population 

of Jerusalem, which remained captive until Sala-ad 
36

Din’s triumphal return in 1187.37 The colonial period 

is portrayed as the enslavement of Muslim people 

by Western oppressors—specifically the UK—while 

the discovery of oil in 1932 is portrayed as Western 

exploitation—specifically by the United States—as 

is the dismantlement of the Ottoman Empire—the 

last Caliphate. The Sykes-Picot agreement, the Balfour declaration, the Suez crisis—all are seen not as 

discrete moments in history, but as a continuum of a 

premeditated war against Islam. Wrapped around the 

narrative is the claim that Christianity and Judaism 

seek to destroy Islam, for which selective interpretations of Koranic verses help strengthen the argument. 

The West, so the narrative runs, proclaims values of 

fairness, justice, democracy, and equality, and it undermines them whenever Muslims aspire to the selfsame values. Hamas, for example, is democratically 

elected in the Gaza strip, and yet the West refuses to 

recognize it and responds with sanctions against the 

Palestinian people; the West supports Arab regimes 

in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Jordan, et al., where 

free speech is denied, where elections are rigged, and 

where torture is a natural consequence of speaking 

out. The West facilitated the creation of an illegal state, 

one brought into being by means of so-called Zionist 

terrorism—Israel—yet refuses to sanction the creation 

of the state of Palestine. The European Union opens 

its doors to Greeks but refuses Muslim Turks. In the 

Former Republic of Yugoslavia, Christian Croatia is 

allowed by the West to break away, but when Muslim 

Bosnia does so, it is savagely attacked by Serbia. Refusing to allow armaments to enter Bosnia, the West 

stands by while Muslims are ethnically cleansed by 

Christians. In Iraq, the West uses white phosphorous; 

in Abu Ghraib and Guatanamo, it systematically abuses human rights; Britain publishes Salman Rushdie’s 
37

book, The Satanic Verses; Denmark publishes cartoons 

of the Prophet Mohamed; and Belgium bans the veil—

all vilify Islam, all with the supposed justification of 

the presumption of free speech. These are the modern 

crusades, and even the 43rd U.S. President has admitted as much.

On February 20, 1952, one of the “fathers” of Britain’s Political Warfare Executive, Richard Crossman, 

gave an address to the Royal United Services Institute, 

London, on Psychological Warfare in World War II. In 

a long and detailed explanation of how his organization had helped defeat the Nazis, he observed:

The advertiser believed that somehow you could get 

people to surrender by giving them sales talk. He used 

to say, “Do you suffer from National Socialism?—Buy 

British Democracy” on the same lines as “Do you suffer from Body Odor—Buy deodorant.” That sort of 

thing does not work; it is too obvious . . . the usual 

advertising methods are not efficacious.38

Martin F. Herz was chief Leaflet writer for the PsyOps 

division in SHAEF during World War II. In the 1949 

Autumn edition of The Public Opinion Quarterly, 

he wrote:

The dispersion of themes in some of our combat propaganda may have been caused in part by the advertising and journalism background of many of our propagandists. Combat propaganda and other propaganda 

addressed to enemy populations in wartime posed 

quite different problems than domestic advertising!39

In marketing, the desired behavior is fairly uniform, and quite predictable: “Buy our product.” The 

whole campaign, from planning to research to execution, wraps linearly around the trajectory of sell-
38

ing a product. Yet, this does not map to the sorts of 

behaviors we seek to influence in conflict areas such 

as Afghanistan, or indeed the wider Muslim world, 

where negative views are so very widely entrenched. 

Commercial marketing is not the kind of discipline 

that is equipped to deal with behavioral outcomes or 

scenarios that are more complex or require more nuanced definitions. It is this author’s view that marketing principles are simply not effective enough to drive 

U.S. military capabilities and development; and that 

the end of that road will only be failure. Further, it is 

this author’s view that only a scientific approach will 

do. This approach must be based on the sciences pertaining to human behavior, in all its myriad manifestations and with all its bewildering complexities, and 

not the limited perspective of consumer behavior, or 

the misguided assumptions of attitudinal psychology. 

Unfortunately, the special knowledge necessary 

to do this is neither held in the U.S. military community, nor for that matter in almost all of the contractors 

for which the U.S. Government has priming arrangements. The U.S. contractual system is bewildering, 

and while it understandably seeks to place U.S. governmental business with U.S. companies, there is a real 

issue when customers—U.S. military commands—are 

locked into contractual arrangements with companies 

that simply do not have the necessary expertise to undertake the desired tasks. This has been most recently 

demonstrated by a specialist UK company that was 

contacted by a combatant command (CCMD) for deep 

specialist TAA services. Or rather they would have 

been had the CCMD not been locked into a binding 

arrangement with a huge U.S. service provider that, 

sensing revenue, refused to subcontract the work, 

claiming they could undertake it themselves. With 
39

no demonstrable background in TAA provision, the 

CCMD rather wisely refused to let them have the 

business. In the face of such bureaucratic constraints, 

the CCMD chose not to let the contract at all and the 

work, an operational assessment of a high priority audience, was not undertaken.

MEASURES OF EFFECT 

Former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan and now 

trustee of the Asia Foundation, Karl Eikenberry, wrote 

in The Financial Times40 in late 2012 that “There is yet 

hope for Afghanistan,” and that a recent Asia Foundation Poll proved it. He wrote:

. . . 52 per cent of the people believe it is moving in 

the right direction; 93 per cent have great or fair confidence in their armed forces; 89 per cent give the government good marks for the provision of education; 72 

per cent say their national legislature is addressing the 

problems of ordinary citizens; and 50 per cent assert 

their financial wellbeing has improved over the past 

12 months? Not the US, Singapore, or Brazil. Answer: 

Afghanistan.

Such pronouncements rely on polling. Consider a typical polling question:

Q. Do you think the security situation around 

your home is:

A. A lot worse than last year.

B. Worse than last year? 

C. The same as last year?

D. Better than last year? 

E. A lot better than last year? 
40

Now what is the precise difference between answers A and B; or D and E? By what authoritative 

comparators can a respondent judge if the security situation today is the same as a year ago? What counts as 

“a lot” to one respondent may not even register with 

another respondent, even if they come from the same 

family. Each person’s perception of events is different 

and will be based upon individual experiences and influences. This type of polling question lacks any kind 

of scientific precision and is also highly subjective to 

each respondent, and each respondent’s views are 

highly temporal. In 2010, the Asia Foundation published a poll result that claimed 84 percent of respondents agreed that the ANP was “honest and fair.” This 

seems a rather high figure for a nation-state in transition from civil war. One way of, perhaps, benchmarking it is to compare it with other nations, for example 

the United States and the UK. In 2011, the UK’s customer satisfaction with local police services was rated 

as 71 percent41—a lower figure than that for the ANP. 

Does 71 percent seem a fair representation of British 

support for the police? The truth is that it is almost 

impossible to tell: actual behavior is perhaps the only 

useful indicator. For example, to someone living in a 

small(ish) village with a very low crime rate and just a 

couple of very friendly community police officers, that 

satisfaction rating might seem unduly low. Yet, for a 

poorly educated and low income young black man in 

a depressed inner city area, that figure might seem far 

too high. Indeed, a recent report posited that hatred of 

the British police was a primary cause of the London 

riots of August 2011.42 How, then, can a national survey, with so many different polarized views, give a 

fair indication of the genuine levels of support, or lack 

of support for the police in the UK or, for that matter, 
41

the Afghan Security Forces? The U.S. Department of 

Justice has apparently recognized this problem, and 

in their own report into U.S. citizens’ satisfaction with 

their police departments, highlighted: 

Different individuals respond differently to qualityof-life surveys even though they are exposed to similar neighborhood conditions. Moreover, persons from 

the same neighborhood report different levels of satisfaction with Police—these inconsistencies limit the 

relevance of . . . [these surveys].43

All of this raises the question of why, if these types 

of survey are not appropriate for U.S. police forces 

and so plainly at odds with the reality of UK policing, 

are they considered suitable for guiding major policy 

decisions about Afghanistan? What is particularly 

interesting is that, while in 2010 the Asia Foundation 

was busy polling, another, more detailed qualitative 

data gathering operation was being conducted in Maiwand Province by the British company, SCL. SCL is 

almost unique in the international contractor community in that it has a dedicated, and funded, behavioral 

research arm located in the prestigious home of British science and research, The Royal Institute, London. 

The results of their survey were quite different and 

indicated widespread disillusionment with, low confidence in, and fear of the ANP.

What is the acid test for polling? This author 

would suggest that poll results must agree with anecdotal experiences and reports derived from being out 

on the ground in Afghanistan talking to people. Since 

the Asia Foundation poll does not agree with personal 

experience on the ground nor does it stand up to a 

simple benchmarking exercise, it perhaps should be 

treated with skepticism. Polls, however well they are 
42

produced, cannot be more than a comforting hand rail 

for policymakers and cannot be substitutes for more 

empirically based qualitative research.

The 2012 RAND report on U.S. IO identified the 

absence of robust and empirical MOE as one of its key 

findings. Without MOE, it is almost impossible to draw 

any sensible conclusions on the success, or otherwise, 

of IO campaigns. The fact that Congress was unable to 

be persuaded that its past expenditure on U.S. IO had 

been worthwhile is indicative itself that the programs 

provided by contractors lacked empirically derived 

TAA which, in turn, means they lacked academic rigor. It should also be obvious that MOE can only be applied to behaviors. Either a behavior exists, or it does 

not. It may reduce or increase, but it is measurable. 

If the campaign is to grow less poppy, you can visibly see if that campaign has been successful from the 

air. If the campaign is to encourage greater use of, for 

example, Highway 611 (the major north-south route 

that goes from Lashkar Gah to Sangin in Helmand, 

Afghanistan) by private cars (thus fostering a feeling 

of security), you can easily measure road usage with 

a few strategically placed motion sensors. You could 

even measure accurately the numbers of calls to a hotline that led to successful arrests or locating IEDs. 

Only through TAA baselining can MOE be derived. The absence of a TAA derived baseline is an 

immediate indicator to intelligent customers that the 

proposed program is unlikely to work. If any thought 

is given to MOE, then it is regularly in the context of 

measures of performance (MOP) or measures of activity (MOA). For example, the MOA associated with an 

airborne leaflet drop is that the necessary aircraft and 

equipment were serviceable and available to make a 

certain number of predetermined sorties. The MOP 
43

is that a specific number of leaflets or other products 

were dropped. The MOE, however, is the specific 

action(s) that the leaflets engendered in the audiences 

that they targeted. 

Conversely, attitudinal campaigns are not measurable in any meaningful manner. This is why surveys 

and polling have blossomed so fully during the wars 

in Iraq and Afghanistan44—and, we would contend, 

with such disastrous results. The focus has been on attitudes, and surveys and polling are a logical if imperfect way to measure whether attitudes have changed. 

The key to successful MOE is two-fold. First, activity has to be properly base-lined. It is no good attempting measure behaviors, or for that matter attitude, after the IO/PSYOPS intervention if there is no 

record of what the behavior or attitude was prior to it. 

There are several issues involved here.

a. Establishing behavioral indicators. From the 

outset, it is necessary to identify appropriate behavioral indicators by which to measure change. This requires an in-depth understanding of the target group 

and their behavioral patterns, and a sufficiently rich 

awareness of which behaviors are most indicative 

of change. It is hard to do this in the beginning and 

actually must be based on high quality TAA of the 

prospective audience(s) to narrow down the possibilities. Often, several iterations may be needed to get 

this right. 

b. Causality versus causation. The real devil in 

all this is how to unravel the competing effects of factors that cause the behavior change and those that 

are merely correlated with change. A well-worn but 

classic example is that ice-cream sales increase in 

line with the numbers of drownings. This does not 

imply, though, that one caused the other. It is more 

likely that a third factor, hot weather, underlies both 
44

increases. How can we distinguish whether retention 

in the ANA has improved due to our behavioral campaign, or because more insurgents have infiltrated the 

ranks and wish to build up numbers for attacks from 

within? It is difficult to perform analyses of this kind, 

but, if approached scientifically, it is possible. Prominent U.S. social psychologist Timothy Wilson has 

criticized the Drug, Abuse, Resistance & Education 

(D.A.R.E) anti-drug program which is used by 70 percent of American schools, and yet, until recently, had 

never been tested. He explained on “The Edge” social 

science website: 

If there’s one thing social psychologists do know how 

to do, it’s how to do experiments and how to test 

whether an intervention is working, and with good 

control groups and statistical analyses, seeing whether 

something works or not. Yet, a lot of the current programs in a wide variety of areas have never been vetted in that way, and are just based on common sense.45

The testing Wilson referred to revealed a shocking 

result: the program did not work. In fact, Wilson believed the program could even have increased drug 

abuse among the target population. MOE needs to be 

based on rigorous scientific testing, not on weak post 

hoc or supplementary measures. 

c. Changes in audience. Part of fulfilling the criteria above can be achieved by recognizing that there 

are multiple stages of change (one influential behavior model by Prochaska and DeClemete46 is called the 

“stages of change” model), and that these can and 

should be measured. By doing so, we can get a more 

accurate description of how change is occurring and 

to what extent it relates to military actions. Between 

basic behavioral indicators and the kinds of large- 
45

scale behavior changes that campaigns seek to measure, many changes occur at the audience level that 

are more subtle, yet highly predictive of behavioral 

outcomes. These will include attitudes, intentions, 

motivational dispositions, and perceptions, and they 

need to be measured, too; not as an end in themselves, 

but as ways of gauging intermediate changes in 

target groups. 

MOE is not just vital to behaviorally based projects 

(and almost impossible in attitudinally based products), but it is also vital for one higher strategic reason. Without robust and proven MOE, savvy politicians—with many deserving and competing demands 

upon scarcer fiscal resources—rightly find it hard to 

see or demonstrate return on investment. In the U.S. 

IO program thus far, they have not seen this at all. 

As the U.S. Committee on Appropriations reported 

in 2010: 

The Committee believes that the Department of Defense, and the Combatant Commands which drive the 

demand for information operations, need to reevaluate IO requirements in the context of the roles and 

missions of the United States Military along with consideration for the inherent capabilities of the military 

and the funding available to meet these requirements. 

In support of this evaluation, the Committee has determined that many of the ongoing IO activities for 

which fiscal year 2010 funding is requested should be 

terminated immediately.47

Achieving More for Less.

In 2007 the UK Defence Academy produced a 

limited-distribution briefing paper entitled The Realities of Defense Economics. In a paragraph entitled “The 
46

Problem of the Defense Budget,” it made the following observations: 

For 300 years, during peacetime, the English / UK 

Defence Budget has been remarkably consistent at 

between 2-5% of GDP [gross domestic product]. At 

2-3% GDP—without the running costs of current operations, we cannot sustain the capability to conduct 

the full spectrum of military operations that we have 

in the past. To do that, we would need 4-5% GDP. 

Even to maintain our current reduced capabilities and 

associated minimal structures, Defence needs more 

money than it is getting. Conclusion: Either we need 

a serious increase in the Defence Budget or we need 

to introduce drastic changes in the way we do things. 

(And most likely, we need a combination of the two). 

“Drastic Change” could be in:

• how we procure equipment, what we buy, how we 

make it, etc.;

• personnel policies—how we manage careers, man 

our units, ships, etc.;

• how we structure and use reserves;

• whether we are content to have Armed Forces with 

only “niche capabilities”;

• how we develop non-military ways of taking on 

and defeating an opponent.

It is the last bullet that is of most interest to this discussion. To see the most dramatic advances in thinking 

on “using nonmilitary ways of taking on and defeating an opponent,” we should look to the aspirations to 

nonmilitary strategic effect of several countries.

China.

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) perceives 

future warfare evolving into a battle for full spectrum dominance—Military, Political, Economic, and 
47

Diplomatic. In each of these, the PRC recognizes that 

influence (as a noun) is absolutely central, and accordingly has proactively grown what it refers to as its 

three warfares (san zhong zhanfa) concept.48 These are 

the principal enablers (what this monograph defined 

earlier as the verbs of influence) which are aimed at 

preconditioning key areas of competition in its favor 

through mastery of psychological warfare, media 

warfare, and legal warfare. As the U.S. DoD’s annual 

report to Congress 2011 noted: 

In 2003, the CCP Central Committee and the CMC 

endorsed the three warfare concept, reflecting China’s 

recognition that as a global actor, it will benefit from 

learning to effectively utilize the tools of public opinion, messaging, and influence [author’s highlighting]. 

China likely hopes to employ these three concepts in 

unison, particularly during the early stages of a crisis, 

as they have a tendency to bolster one another.49 

In their January 2012 report, China’s Three Warfares,

Delex Consulting noted that the Chinese are aiming for a “high degree of precision in targeting critical nodes to achieve non-linear effects.”50 As part of 

China’s developing asymmetric strategy, the People’s 

Liberation Army (PLA) has developed capabilities, 

referred to as “Assassin’s Mace” (sha shou jian) programs, which have been designed to give technologically inferior military advantages over technologically 

superior adversaries, and thus change the direction of 

a conflict. Since the late 1990s, the term has appeared 

more frequently in Chinese military publications and 

journals, particularly in the context of any potential 

conflict with the United States over the issue of, for 

example, Taiwanese sovereignty.51
48

There is insufficient English language literature 

in open sources to determine what does or does not 

constitute “assassin’s mace”; however, in a country 

that spawned Sun Tzu and his seminal proclamation 

that: “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy 

without fighting,” it would seem likely that ideas of 

applied behavioral change, and in particular the TAA 

that underpins it, if not already part of the Chinese 

military lexicon, will be soon. Timothy Thomas of the 

U.S. Foreign Military Studies Office (FMSO) notes in 

his book, Dragon Bytes, that: 

In ‘The Doctrine of Psychological Operations in Ancient China,’ Wu Juncang and Zhang Qiancheng note 

that China’s history of psychological operations goes 

back more than four thousand years [and] . . . those 

early psychological experiences culminated in Sun 

Tzu’s Art of War, which describes the main objective 

of war as defeating the enemy without having to fight; 

the main essence of war as attacking the enemy’s strategy; the main principle of war as contending for control of hearts, minds and morale; and the main idea of 

war as focusing on the enemy commander’s decisionmaking skills and personal traits.52

How does the United States and its allies, particularly those around the Pacific rim, deal with the 

challenges of a strident Chinese government exercising territorial claims and casting ambitions for future 

resources? It could, of course, demonstrate military 

capability through military exercises. This would be 

a perfectly legitimate response but one which the Chinese would have already considered and modeled for 

response options. The United States may choose to escalate exercising to force, or indeed it may happen by 

accident; neither is a palatable contingency. It could 
49

embark upon an attitudinal based IO program, much 

as has been the practice in recent years, although we 

would suggest that from the evidence presented earlier, it really should not. It has certainly already embarked upon diplomatic and economic activities, and 

we would suggest both will be carefully studied and 

publicly mitigated by China.

Current thinking and past best practice is all very 

predictable by the Chinese who have a track record of 

watching, learning, and adapting. As the DoD report 

has noted, the Chinese Armed Forces may not have 

the military sophistication of the United States yet, but 

it is growing. It seems likely that they are supplementing hard kinetic capability with soft IO capability. 

While the Chinese aircraft carrier fleet remains physically embryonic, it is globally emblematic: 

The development of aircraft carriers is an important 

part of China’s national defense modernization, in 

particular its naval forces, and this aircraft carrier is 

an essential stepping stone toward its own more advanced aircraft carriers in the future.53

Of course, it is likely to take years before China is 

able to undertake “carrier diplomacy”54 but, during 

that period, clumsy carrier-related rhetoric and deployment may well exacerbate tensions; and in the absence of hard physical military power, why would the 

Chinese not embark upon alternative means of achieving effect? One has to look at other areas of innovation 

to see that the Chinese are neither risk adverse nor cash 

strapped. Perhaps what is most interesting from the 

2006 Chinese experiment to use ground based lasers 

to blind U.S. reconnaissance satellites is the comment 

of Director of the National Office of Reconnaissance 

Donald Kerr: “It makes us think.”55 There is plenty to 
50

think about. For example, in Unrestricted Warfare,

56 a 

book published in China in February 1999 which proposes tactics for China to compensate for their military 

inferiority vis-à-vis the United States, the authors state 

that it may become “necessary to use special means to 

wage psychological war aimed at soldiers’ families far 

back in the rear area.” 

China’s willingness to engage in sensitive issues in 

nonconventional military ways is exemplified by the 

“Twitter War” that erupted in March 2012 over the 

issue of Tibet. 57 This saw bots flooding discussions 

with the hashtags, #Tibet and #Freetibet, threatening Tibetan activists and condemning those who had 

died through self-immolation. Although this was perhaps the first Chinese major hostile IO campaign to 

receive serious attention overseas, it followed a series 

of similar programs over recent years tied to specific 

economic and security objectives.58 Indeed, the beginning of 2013 saw media reporting of a brigade, possibly called waumao and numbering as many as 60,000 

people, who are paid 75 U.S. cents per Tweet by the 

ruling Chinese regime to say positive things about 

the Communist Party on the Chinese equivalent of 

Twitter, Weibo.59 As one commentator suggested, 

China sees Weibo as the ultimate arena for Chinese 

public opinion. 

Russia.

China is by no means the only country to be actively engaging in focused IO—Russia, too, has tested 

their utility. According to research undertaken by the 

U.S. FMSO, Russia has:
51

two aspects to its IO theory: information-technical and 

information psychological. Not only are these different from the US’s “assigned and supporting capabilities and activities,” but Russia also views Information 

Superiority differently. Russian theorists place as 

much emphasis on “disorganizing” the enemy as they 

do toward achieving information superiority. In fact, 

they believe the former produces the latter.60

In the years following the overthrow of the Tsar 

of Russia, Vladimir Lenin’s secret services—the Cheka—adopted an idea that the Soviets were later to 

embrace—Maskirovka. This is a term that has no direct 

equivalent in the West, but it simultaneously encompasses the arts of: 

concealment, the use of dummies and decoys, disinformation and even the execution of complex demonstration maneuvers. Indeed anything capable of . . . 

weakening the enemy.61

Indeed, conscious that the Union of Soviet Socialist 

Republics (USSR) would struggle to match the pace of 

technological investment of the United States, the Soviets actively sought alternatives to hard power, and, 

by the late 1950s, scientists began studying physical 

and social regulatory systems. Using newly developed computer technology, scientists were directed 

to consider military decisionmaking. In doing so, they 

created a modeling system comprised of three subsystems: a model to simulate one’s own decisions, 

a model to simulate the adversary’s systems, and a 

model to actually make decisions. The model’s inventor, Vladimir Lefebvre, concluded that this model 

could be used to influence an adversary into making 
52

decisions that were favorable to the Soviet Union. 

Lefebvre argued that: 

In making his decisions, the adversary uses information about the area of conflict, about his own troops 

and ours, about their ability to fight, etc. We can influence his channels of information and send messages 

that shift the flow of information in a way favorable 

to us.62

In essence, Lefebvre was suggesting that if the Soviet Union could get inside the decisionmaking process 

of the adversary and understand that process, it could 

provide the adversary with information and conditions which might lead it to make a predetermined 

decision. According to Lebvfre, rather than looking at 

conflict as an interaction between two military forces, 

conflict should be considered as being between the decisionmaking processes of the two opponents, where 

each adversary bases his decisions on a model of both 

himself and his adversary—i.e., a reflective interaction between the two. K. V. Tarakanov explains the 

process thus:

Reflexive control is understood as the process of one of 

the sides giving reasons to the enemy from which he 

can logically infer his own decision, pre-determined 

by the first side . . . reflexive control should be understood as the reflection by the opposed sides in the 

thoughts of their discussions with each other.63

Or, from more contemporary literature: 

Reflexive control is defined as a means of conveying to 

a partner or an opponent specially prepared information to incline him to voluntarily make the predeter-
53

mined decision desired by the initiator of the action. 

Even though the theory was developed long ago in 

Russia, it is still undergoing further refinement. Recent proof of this is the development in February 2001, 

of a new Russian journal known as Reflexive Processes 

and Control. The journal is not simply the product of 

a group of scientists but, as the editorial council suggests, the product of some of Russia’s leading national 

security institutes, and boasts a few foreign members 

as well.64

Russian theorist S. A. Komov offered a series of 

theoretical examples of the deployment of reflexive 

control:

• Distraction—during preparatory stages of 

combat operations, creating a real or imaginary threat against one of the most vital enemy 

places such as flanks and rear, forcing him to 

reevaluate his decisions to operate on this or 

that axis.

• Overload—often manifested by sending the enemy a large amount of conflicting information.

• Paralysis—creating the belief of a specific threat 

to a vital interest or weak spot.

• Suggestion—offer information that affects the 

enemy legally, morally, ideologically, or in 

other areas.65

Of course, military sophistication and preparedness is not necessarily something that we associate with 

contemporary Russia. Since the end of the Cold War, 

imagery of decrepit Russian warships driven ashore 

on remote peninsulas, an unpaid conscript army, and 

low morale seem to have characterized public coverage of the former Soviet “bear.” Yet, during the period 

of underfunding of physical and kinetic capability, 
54

Russia continued to develop advanced theoretical and 

strategic concepts such as reflexive control. FMSO 

believes they do so because “Russians believe that a 

single global ‘information space’ is emerging, which 

could allow a country to exploit this space and alter 

the global balance of power,”66 continuing that “Russian security specialists believe that no issue is more 

important or more fraught with uncertainty than the 

current and future information environment.”67

FMSO suggests a number of reasons why this is so. 

First, it notes that people have unprecedented access 

to information, which allows citizens and decisionmakers alike a variety of choices. This comes at a time 

when many Russians are: 

still searching for an ideology or set of principles in 

which they can find the values and purposes for their 

very existence. Under such conditions, the mass media, especially television and the press, play a much 

more important role than ever before.68

Second, Russians perceive that information itself 

has developed into a very important type of national 

or strategic resource. The “informatization” of society influences financial markets, business practices, 

and even the capabilities of military weapons. FMSO 

states that: 

Russians believe that countries that possess ‘information superiority’ may be more inclined than before to 

employ military force. Military objectives may seem 

more attainable without significant loss of life and 

with no apparent ecological risk to such countries. 

Many Russians believe that the recent NATO intervention in Kosovo was based on the dictate of information superiority, thereby virtually guaranteeing a 

NATO victory.69
55

Third, Russians realize that few legal restraints exist that can regulate information interventions or even 

attacks. This factor also encourages the growth of 

concepts such as cyber terrorism, specifically the use 

by terrorists of information means to penetrate or destroy information security systems of banks, military 

institutions, or vital societal assets (power stations and 

other infrastructure facilities and systems). As Professor of Political Science Stephen Cimbala notes: 

Russia’s military is aware of US . . . superiority in advanced technological conventional warfare. Therefore 

Russian security experts have studied the importance 

of indirect approaches to offsetting US Superiority, including asymmetrical information strategies.70

Most recently this has manifested itself as soft 

force—the term coined by Moscow State University 

lecturer Andrey Pronin which will present the United 

States with an “ideological challenge,” repeating, Pronin argues, the success of the USSR which was able to 

split the West and find itself numerous allies.71

These Russian ideas are of direct relevance to the 

21st century, and in particular to U.S. IO programs. 

Lieutenant Colonel (Retired) Charles Blandy served 

as a leading expert at the British precursor of FMSO, 

the UK Defence Academy’s Conflict Studies Research 

Centre (CSRC). Blandy believes that he can see evidence of reflexive control in the lead-up to Russia’s 

incursion into Georgia in 2008. Blandy writes that: 

the Soviet and Russian general staffs, over a long period of time, have studied the application of reflexive 

control theory . . . in order to influence and control an 

enemy’s decision making process.72
56

Blandy believes that Georgian President Mikheil 

Saakashvili’s character and personality made him ripe 

for a reflexive control operation. Saakashvili was:

hot headed, often rash in his decisions and intemperate. In my view the Russians knew how to raise the 

political pressure on him and also what he would do 

when the pressure became unbearable.73

That pressure had been gradually, and according 

to Blandy deliberately, raised by Russia’s intense international political bullying over the issue of the semiautonomous Republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia 

for some years. However it was, in Blandy’s view, intensified by the deployment of Russian troops in the 

spring of 2008 to Abkhazia—for President Saakashvili 

this was a well signposted step too far. Blandy notes, 

in particular, the publication in the Russian military 

newspaper, Krasnaya Zvezda, of a detailed psychological profile of Saakashvili, indicative, in Blandy’s 

view, of the studies and assessments that would have 

formed a useful template for shaping the Georgian 

President’s decisions.74

The Norwegian Ministry of Defence would also 

appear to agree. In a 2010 briefing to NATO, they concluded that the Russian IO Campaign was focused on 

four strategic objectives: (1) discredit and criminalize 

Georgian operations as genocide; (2) undermine the 

credibility of President Saakashvili; (3) legitimize its 

own invasion of South Ossetia; and (4) use CNO to cut 

Georgian communications at the critical early stages 

of the campaign. The desired end state, according to 

the Norwegians, was twofold: to prevent NATO intervention and support for Georgia, and to solidify 

internal domestic Russian support.75
57

Georgia has not been the only example of a growing Russian willingness to engage in overt IO at a preconflict stage. The cyber attacks on Estonia are well 

documented but less so is the apparent incessant Russian IO focus on Estonia’s Baltic neighbors, Lithuania 

and Latvia. At a NATO PsyOps Conference held in 

Vilnius, Lithuania, in the fall of 2012, Lithuanian and 

Latvian IO officers provided the conference with a detailed presentation on how, in their view, Russia was 

proactively seeking to discredit the idea of Lithuanian 

(and Latvian) national identity. This, they demonstrated, was being undertaken by a series of concerted 

and organized IO activities, notably in the cultural, 

television, sporting, and performing domains. They 

also highlighted how Lithuania’s Special Forces, Artivas, and their operations in Afghanistan had become 

the subject of concerted public exposure. 

TAA and Strategic Deterrence.

Arguably one of the biggest historical weaknesses 

in U.S. strategy has been the absence of a proper “Understand” capability. In the 1970s, military theorist 

and former U.S. Air Force officer John Boyd devised 

a concept that is still taught in western defense academies today—the OODA (Observe, Orient, Decide, and 

Act) loop. Yet, it might be argued that the U.S. standing capacity to orient in advance of future crises has 

repeatedly been found wanting. This has been compounded by an over-reliance on the views of national 

intelligence collection agencies, who are, in essence, 

short-term collectors rather than long-term trend analysts. One might cite the examples of the Yom Kippur War, the Iranian Revolution, the Soviet invasion 

of Afghanistan, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the 
58

fall of the Berlin Wall, India’s 1998 nuclear tests, the 

9/11 attacks, and the Arab Spring, none of which 

were predicted by the United States. In effect, this, 

then, leads to something more resembling an “ODA” 

loop: Observe that something in the world has gone 

wrong; Decide that some form of reactive response is 

required; and then Act, responding later to whatever 

consequences may follow. 

The United States is by no means alone in falling into this trap of taking precipitate action without 

orienting for second- and third-order consequences. 

Many other states have done the same, but history 

shows surprisingly few examples of states that successfully anchored their foreign policy on preemptive 

orientation (Understanding). Yet, TAA is the perfect 

vehicle to grow this preemptive understanding. Imagine a mechanism where TAA is being conducted continuously on the top 10 or so countries of interest to the 

United States, with the key groups, formed or emerging, being studied, their motivations being mapped. 

This is not conventional intelligence gathering, this 

is using proven and behavioral science techniques to 

predict what groups might rise to preeminence, given 

certain conditions and motivators and what behaviors 

those groups might exhibit. This knowledge is invaluable in its own right—but when it is used to model 

likely intervention scenarios, it becomes a very specialized tool indeed, one that can genuinely assist in 

strategic long-term planning as opposed short-term 

reactive action. We could even term this strategic deterrence because, armed with the necessary motivational understanding and having modeled different 

influence interventions, the United States and its allies 

can properly plan for the unexpected, and publicly 

or privately inform its allies and adversaries accord-
59

ingly. This model would more than address the comment by Brooks highlighted at the very start of this 

monograph: 

Strategic communication is a confusing term, but one 

that has nonetheless come to stand for something 

complex and important, something that has more to 

do with strategy than with communications.76

TAA and China. 

For all the improvements in military thinking with 

respect to cultural, anthropological, and sociological 

understanding (and we think here in particular of 

HTT), a TAA program, with downstream influence intervention, is the work of highly specialized commercial providers not government agencies. TAA is far 

too complex and must be conducted in-county by organic nationals, with some degree of separation from 

their U.S. sponsor. This requires a degree of subtlety 

and agility that may not be possible for governmental 

agencies. In any event, the protocols for analyzing this 

data are so complex that they cannot be mirrored any 

time soon by governmental agencies. The U.S. Government has already been the principal consumer of 

robust behavioral change programs and as the U.S. 

Government Accountability Office’s report, US Public 

Diplomacy—Actions Needed to Improve Strategic Use and 

Coordination of Research, noted “the central importance 

of research in focusing on behaviour change.”77

This will prove particularly important in understanding China’s future ambitions. In 2005, Deputy 

U.S. Secretary of State Robert Zoellick called on China—as a country that had transformed itself largely 

as a result of its participation in the international sys-
60

tem—to take on a greater leadership role within that 

system. In Zoellick’s words: “As a responsible stakeholder, China would be more than just a member—it 

would work with us to sustain the international system that has enabled its success.”78 However, as the 

U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission noted in their 2011 report:

Although China’s role and stake in the international 

system has only increased in the intervening 5 years, 

there has been little appreciable evidence that they 

have accepted the Zoellick argument on being a responsible stakeholder.79

Indeed, one might suggest that this was always 

an unrealistic expectation based on a poor TAA of 

the Chinese position and its ambitions. Why would 

China, for example, seek to advance an international 

system established at Bretton Woods in 1944, some 

5 years before the PRC in its present form was created, which solidifies the U.S. position of global hegemony? China may well have huge international aid 

programs; but make no mistake, China’s international 

activities are far from altruistic. Its soft power effort 

is enormous and seeks to benefit only one recipient 

in the long run—China. The Three Warfares concept 

is an example of China’s willingness to adapt to a 

changing environment, not necessarily conform to the 

status quo. It is presumed that the United States will 

not wish to engage in overt military conflict with the 

PRC. Indeed, the United States has been at pains to 

emphasis that it seeks “neither conflict nor containment”80 in its Chinese policy. Yet at the same time, the 

United States may wish to check some of the PRC’s 

more contentious ambitions; not necessarily in a manner visible to the general public. (Indeed, this might be 
61

a counterproductive strategy since the need for China 

to retain “face” may prompt undesirable behavior—

for example, the harassment of the USNS Impeccable in 

2009.)81 But it must be visible to the Chinese government. It would be strange if a nation that has consistently espoused a holistic view of conflict, from Sun 

Tzu to the Three Warfares concept, is not already undertaking targeted behavioral influence campaigns of 

its own. That job is made easier by the huge amount 

of freely available U.S. and Western doctrine and operational data that a Google search reveals online, the 

huge Chinese disapora and its connections back to the 

PRC, the U.S. operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, the 

openness of the U.S. media, Freedom of Information, 

and ease of travel and communication. The United 

States has far fewer of the same advantages when it 

comes to understanding the workings of the Chinese 

Communist Party. This is a scenario that is aching for 

a behavioral approach, but one that needs to start now 

through the instigation of a robust TAA process of direct and indirect actors.

The Distraction of “Cyber.” 

This author assesses that there also exists a risk 

that momentum may be lost because of the rapidly expanding interest in all things “cyber.” While the 2007 

cyber attacks in Estonia rightly came as a wakeup call 

to policymakers on both sides of the Atlantic, some 

observers have suggested that too much time and 

money is being spent on cyber, perhaps because of its 

perceived effect in the Arab Spring. Dr. David Betz of 

London’s King’s College has written:
62

Like the shock paddles of a defibrillator on the chest of 

a heart attack victim the prefix ‘cyber’ has an electrifying effect on policymakers and strategists wrestling 

with the complexities of information age security—or 

more commonly today, ‘cybersecurity’. Successfully 

attaching the term to this or that policy appears to 

markedly increase its chances of survival. Thus in recent years while public spending has been shrinking 

(or is expected imminently to shrink) we have seen 

a bonanza of resources dedicated to countering or 

mitigating threats to our economic vitality from ‘cyber 

espionage’ and ‘cyber crime’, societal cohesion from 

‘cyber subversion’ and ‘cyber terror’, and ultimately 

our material being from ‘cyber war’. ‘I dare say,’ said 

Deputy Secretary of Defence Ashton B. Carter in 

March 2012, ‘we’d spend a lot more if we could figure 

out where to spend it . . . the foreign policy community 

is worried too much about the effect of cyber on the 

existing distribution of power among states in the international system. It is not worried enough about the 

ways in which digital connectivity is imbuing a wide 

range of novel globally networked social movements 

with a potential strategic significance not seen by nonstate actors since 1648.’82

Or to put it another way, we are collectively too 

worried about cyber attacks on our existing societies and their infrastructures by state actors, and not 

enough on how cyber is facilitating the likely behaviors of disparate nonstate groups; TAA is all about understanding the likely behavior of groups.

Ashton Carter’s observation is likely to be of great 

interest to commercial contractors who will be only 

too happy to advise on how budgets should be spent. 

With all the public criticism of IO, it is perhaps unlikely anyone will be championing behavioral issues 

per se. Indeed, in their response to this author’s paper 
63

entitled “Why Rand Missed the Point,” Rand Corporation’s Arturo G. Munoz stated that: 

the most far-reaching, recent innovation in terms of 

communication and political mobilization is happening on the internet. As we debate recondite issues of 

attitude and behavior, the world is passing us by.83

This is a view given greater airing in RAND’s 2013 

publication: “Redefining Information Warfare Boundaries For An Army In A Wireless World.”84 Yet this author argues that cyber, like TV, video, and the written 

word, is but a 21st century facilitator for exchanging 

already held strong beliefs and behaviors. Certainly 

cyber facilitates their easy transmission to others, be 

it a macro or micro scale, locally or internationally, in 

a way that has not previously been possible. But does 

watching a video on YouTube guarantee that an individual will sign up for violent jihad? Does subscribing 

to a particular Twitter feed ensure that the individual 

will seek out others and plan terrorist attacks? Certainly the Free Syrian Army’s regular postings of alleged atrocities in Syria have encouraged some foreign 

fighters to enter the fray—but not the huge numbers 

who have seen the videos on YouTube and far fewer 

than the numbers who joined the anti-Soviet Jihad in 

1980s Afghanistan, long before the internet was public 

knowledge. The point is that the effect of cyber on behavior, and likely behavior, is as indeterminate as the 

effect of Osama bin Laden’s videos. Understanding 

what motivates specific behavior in particular groups, 

and how to mitigate that, remains absolutely key. 
CONCLUSIONS

To a well-informed, knowledgeable but nevertheless non-U.S. observer, the U.S. SC organization and 

IO seems to be in a state of some chaos. The public 

proclamation by George Little that SC was “dead” 

came as a huge shock, particularly to NATO where 

considerable effort has gone into persuading, cajoling, 

and influencing seniors from many different member nations to allocate funding and personnel to the 

coalition’s SC efforts. Worse still has been the dreadful headlines—media, nongovernmental organization (NGO), and in-house—about the failure of U.S. 

IO in Afghanistan, followed by the various stories 

about long-standing U.S. contractors such as Leonie 

Industries85 and the Rendon Corporation. Unfortunately, it is difficult to argue against the 2012 RAND 

proposition that: 

if the overall IO mission in Afghanistan is defined as 

convincing most residents of contested areas to side 

decisively with the Afghan government and its foreign allies against the Taliban insurgency, this has not 

been achieved.86

Policymakers might therefore be forgiven for considering that, in any review of defense expenditure, 

SC, and in particular IO, would offer quick and easy 

cuts to make. It is quite clear that cuts are coming. Since 

2001, the U.S. defense budget has nearly doubled from 

$287 billion to $530 billion,87 the largest in the world 

(and bigger than the next 13 nations’ defense budgets 

combined)—and this amount still does not include 

the ever-growing cost of the wars of choice in Iraq 

and Afghanistan. The Washington Post opined in 2011 

that the United States had spent about $718 billion on 

64
65

defense and international security assistance,88 and 

approximately $729 billion in 2012. Professor Christopher Croker of the London School of Economics cites 

figures showing that the United States has spent more 

on its current conflicts than it did for all of World War 

II—and, in his view, with demonstrably less result.89

At a time of global financial stress, such figures are 

clearly not sustainable, and as the U.S. Government 

wavered over sequestration in early 2013, the one 

point that was abundantly clear was that U.S. defense 

spending would be reduced, and substantially so. The 

question was simply where and when the savings 

be made. 

In this monograph, this author has sought to demonstrate that the failings in U.S. SC and IO were not 

failings of the concept of SC and IO, but of its day-today implementation. As demonstrated in Case Study 

1, the Afghan wedding dowry program, contractors 

are unafraid to propose extremely imaginative and 

self-evidently expensive “solutions” to U.S. problems, 

particularly when “customers” do not have the necessary experience to understand the nuance of what 

is being suggested. Case Study 2, the Pakistan TV 

advertisements, demonstrated how marketing and 

advertising solutions were being applied to environments where they stood almost no hope of success or 

where success would be impossible to measure in any 

empirical manner. These examples represent merely 

the tip of the iceberg: Over the years, huge amounts 

of money have been spent on IO programs that are 

largely anchored in advertising and marketing style 

communication with little concurrent investment, it 

would appear, in detailed understanding of audiences and environments. Most of the available doctrinal 

documentation talks at length about co-ordination, in-
66

tegration, and synchronization of IO across forces and 

domains. However, there is surprisingly little talk of 

the need to actually understand the likely motivations 

for targeted audiences. Anecdotal evidence would 

suggest that, despite the passage of years, this has remained the Achilles heel of our collective efforts in Afghanistan. Matt Cavanagh, a former advisor to British 

Prime Minister Tony Blair, recalled the 2006 decision 

to deploy British forces to Helmand:

No one inside the British [government] system knew 

much about the insurgency, the opium trade or the 

local politics and tribal dynamics—or just as importantly about how these different elements fitted into 

each other. Planners and policy makers [in 2006] did 

not know much about the human or even physical geography of Helmand.90

In his book, The Operators, the late U.S. Journalist 

Michael Hastings records a meeting of a strategic review panel with senior U.S. briefers:

In one meeting [Andrew] Exum drills down on the 

briefers. Who controls the water? Who are the local 

power brokers? Tell me how they are related to the 

insurgency. The Intel Officers shrug. The questions 

‘scare the hell out of them’.91

Former commander of ISAF Forces General Stanley McChrystal, in a 2011 speech, told the U.S. Council 

on Foreign Relations that:

The U.S. and its NATO allies are only ‘a little better 

than half way’ to achieving their military goals, partly due to a frighteningly simplistic understanding of 

the country.92
67

Without this detailed understanding, I argue that 

any attempt to influence will be predicated upon luck.

Concurrently, there appears to be an absence of intelligent customers. While staff colleges and military 

academies prepare military officers and diplomats for 

career service, experience shows that corporate understanding of even the most basic principles of influence 

are exceptionally weak. This is not a criticism of individuals, more a statement of fact—careers are made 

in commanding companies, battalions, brigades and 

divisions on operations; kinetics prevail. Yet, as the 

wars of choice in Iraq and Afghanistan have amply 

demonstrated, kinetic firepower may very well win 

battles, while the campaigns still flounder. Senior officers are completely familiar with the type of kinetic 

effects that can be achieved, their risks, operating windows, and likely benefits. Their mastery and application of that knowledge is why they are senior commanders entrusted with great military responsibility. 

Unfortunately, the operating environment has now 

changed radically from that which prevailed during 

their formative years. This unfortunately makes them 

highly susceptible to very persuasive and convincing sales talk from communication contractors. Why 

would you NOT buy an IO program from a company 

that, say, boosted sales of a particular car by 30 percent? Superficially, it seems logical, but the nuance 

of the type of communication, and the precise effect 

sought, is lost on busy military people who have no 

background in this area. The simple fact is that a U.S. 

consumer has probably already made the decision to 

buy a new car—the behavioral change has been selfenacted. The marketer’s task is now only to differentiate their product from all others, which they may do 

via cost or associating it with some celebrity endorse-
68

ment—the SUV that George Clooney drives, for example. But what about crises or conflict situations where 

the audience has not made the behavioral change, as 

indeed in Afghanistan, because it does not like any of 

the options available? No amount of marketing will 

make that product attractive. As Lieutenant Colonel 

Cook notes: 

the [US] COIN strategy assumes the [Afghan] people 

will either support the government or the Taliban. . 

. . . The truth is, there is a third choice that seriously 

undermines the coalition’s strategy: most Afghans, if 

freely given the choice, will support neither.93

In short, senior U.S. figures both inside and outside 

the military have been encouraged by large contractors to pay a lot of money that try to sell to Afghans 

a “vision” of the country that fails to connect utterly with the reality of their lives. Yet in almost every 

problem that confronts the United States and its allies, it is behavior that must be addressed—in most instances, the IO objective set does not presuppose any 

attitudinal change. The motivations for the undesired 

behavior will only be found through robust TAA—listening, observing, and understanding—but it appears 

in many instances that this vital step has, at best, been 

superficial and, at worst, completely absent. Despite 

having not seen the full range of U.S. IO programs 

over the last 11 years (although the author has seen 

a very great many), it is possible to offer an opinion 

with some certainty because, had TAA been properly 

undertaken, the DoD would have been able to show 

Congressional Oversight Committees the MOE—and 

it is quite apparent from congressional comments that 

this simply has not happened. The industry has made 

millions from the U.S. Government but, in fact, has 
69

done the cause of IO a great disservice by promising, 

or at least suggesting, solutions that were never more 

than aspirational.

Any U.S. decision to draw down costs for IO funding would therefore be entirely understandable in the 

face of apparent failure over the last few years. But 

once again, this does not denote a failure of IO as a 

concept, but of its implementation. The author contends that the United States must rethink its whole 

approach to IO, in particular the methodologies and 

contractors it employs, but it must not reduce the 

program—indeed, just the opposite. It must reinvigorate it, but with intelligent customers and contractors 

who can work in the areas of behaviors, not attitudes, 

properly deliver, and adapt quickly, to changing circumstances. This is not a new or revolutionary proposition. A search of the U.S. Combined Arms Research 

Library reveals a deep and rich seam of thinking by 

U.S. military students at staff colleges. For example, 

Lieutenant Colonel Barrett Burns, U.S. Army, wrote 

his staff college dissertation on using social influence 

techniques in ISAF; Major Joseph Cox, U.S. Army, 

wrote his thesis on the failure of resourcing IO in Iraq 

and Afghanistan; and Major Alfred Roach, U.S. Army, 

wrote about the problems of using out-dated messaging models.

As a senior U.S. State Department official told the 

UK’s Advanced Command and Staff Course, “America must learn to do more with less.”94 Huge amounts 

of U.S. taxpayer monies have been spent on U.S. information activities since 2001. In 2002, the Pew research 

Global Attitudes Study revealed that:

Since 2000, favorability ratings for the U.S. have fallen 

in 19 of the 27 countries where trend benchmarks are 
70

available. . . . [T]rue dislike, if not hatred, of America is 

concentrated in the Muslim nations of the Middle East 

and in Central Asia, today’s areas of greatest conflict.95

In 2011, the same organization reported that:

The rise of pro-democracy movements has not led to 

an improvement in America’s image in the region. Instead, in key Arab nations and in other predominantly 

Muslim countries, views of the U.S. remain negative, 

as they have been for nearly a decade. Indeed, in Jordan, Turkey and Pakistan, views are even more negative than they were one year ago. . . . Moreover, many 

of the concerns that have driven animosity toward the 

U.S. in recent years are still present—a perception that 

the U.S. acts unilaterally, opposition to the war on terror, and fears of America as a military threat. And in 

countries such as Jordan, Lebanon, and Pakistan, most 

say their own governments cooperate too much with 

the U.S.96

In a 2012 survey of opinion in Pakistan, Pew Research 

reported that:

Roughly three-in-four Pakistanis (74%) consider the 

U.S. an enemy, up from 69% last year and 64% three 

years ago. And President Obama is held in exceedingly low regard.97

While trying to achieve more with less is an admirable idea, these survey trends suggest that, in this important area, the United States has actually achieved 

less with more and, in any event, in focusing on attitudes, may actually be trying to do the wrong thing. 

It seems time for a fundamental rethink in tactics and 

contractors.
71

RECOMMENDATIONS

A summary of recommendations follows.

• SC and IO are force multipliers. Their operation 

has become hugely bureaucratic and cumbersome; streamlining them for efficiency makes 

eminent sense, cutting them does not.

• The United States needs to stop attempting to 

transplant ideas from civilian marketing and 

advertising into conflict environments. They do 

not work and may even be counterproductive. 

Employ specialists, not commercial communication and advertising companies.

• There are two components to an influence 

campaign—profiling the audience (TAA) and 

actually influencing the audience. Historically, 

neither has been performed well. Follow some 

basic rules:

— TAA is the sine qua non of IO and SC; without it you rely upon luck and may even do 

more damage than doing nothing.

— TAA is not polling; the best TAA is undertaken in-country through qualitative research techniques.

— If the TAA indicates that attitudinal change is 

all that is required to motivate an audience, 

then an attitudinal campaign is sufficient. 

However, more often than not, attitudinal 

change is not enough to motivate a change 

of behavior. Always focus on the behavioral 

outcome—not the attitudinal transition.

— Communication may only be a part of the 

behavioral change program—the TAA will 

indicate whether this is the case. Embrace 

the idea of full-spectrum targeting and integrate at the strategic and operational levels.
72

• MOE is a measurement of the change which has 

occurred in an audience group, in line with the 

mission’s objectives. It can only be measured 

against a previously measured baseline—requiring TAA to happen in advance.

• DoD might consider a collaborative arrangement with other SC and IO focused nations, 

specifically the UK, Australia, and Canada, for 

the sharing of best practice and joint funding of 

large projects. Look beyond the U.S. primes for 

best practice.

• Other countries such as China and Russia are 

taking IO very seriously indeed. They appear 

agile and adapt quickly to changing circumstances. The United Staates needs to be monitoring and understanding their processes. The 

three warfares policy potentially provides 

China with far greater capability than just 

cyber attack.

• The United States needs to examine its bureaucracy and ask fundamental questions:

— Is it currently wed to contractors who can 

do what is required? If not, change it . . . and 

them!

— Is it fit and agile enough to deal with 21st 

century challenges? If not, change it.98

ENDNOTES

1. If, indeed, there was one single point in a sectarian conflict 

that was never predicted but which was ignited in the February 

2006 bombing of the Shiite Samarra Mosque. Events such as the 

Sunni tribal “Anbar awakening” were also never predicted.

2. David Gompert and John Gordon, War by Other Means: 

Building Complete and Balanced Capabilities for Counterinsurgency, 

Washington, DC: Rand Corporation, 2007.
73

3. John MacKinlay, The Insurgent Archipelago, London, UK: 

C. Hurst & Co. 2009.

4. David Kilcullen, The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small 

Wars in the Midst of a Big One, London, UK: C. Hurst & Co. 2011.

5. Rupert Smith, The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World, London, UK: Penguin, 2006.

6. Dale Andrade and James Willbanks, “CORDS/Phoenix. 

Counterinsurgency Lessons from Vietnam for the Future,” Military Review, March/April 2006, pp. 77–91.

7. See smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/war-is-about-killing-anddestruction. 

8. John Cook, Afghanistan: The Perfect Failure. A War Doomed 

by the Coalition’s Strategies, Policies and Political Correctness, Bloomington, IL: Xlibris Press, 2012.

9. Tom Vandenbrook, “U.S. ‘info ops’ programs dubious, 

costly,” USA Today, February 29, 2012.

10. Tom Vandenbook, “DoD’s overseas propaganda plan 

raises concerns,” USA Today, November 19, 2012. 

11. Ibid.

12. Arturo Munoz, “US Military Information Operations in 

Afghanistan 2001-2010,” available from www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2012/RAND_MG1060.pdf. 

13. George Little, “Communication Syncronisation—A Local Coordination Process,” Memorandum from George Little to U.S. Commanders of Combatant Commands (CCDR), 

November 28, 2012.

14. See www.linkedin.com/groupItem?view=&gid=816587&type=

member&item=191319744&commentID=108441156&qid=93cc9240-

f126-423a-be6c-b14bd3ead64b&goback=.gmp_816587.
74

15. Rosa Brooks, “Confessions of a Strategic Communicator. Tales 

from Inside the Pentagon’s Message Machine,”available from www.

foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/12/06/confessions_of_a_strategic_

communicator.

16. See www.linkedin.com/groups/Pentagon-Drops-StrategicCommunication-putting-816587%2ES%2E192572946?qid=97ce05e0

-c137-4f4f-84b2-a4c5121e04c8&trk=group_items_see_more-0-b-ttl. 

17. Joint Publication (JP) 3-13, Information Operations, Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Defense, November 27, 2012.

18. JP 1-02, DOD Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, 

Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Defense, November 8, 2010, 

as amended through April 15, 2013.

19. “Examination of Wedding dowries as a means of behavioral 

influence,” A proposal by the International Council on Security 

and Development (ICOS) for the International Security and Assistance Force (ISAF) May 1, 2011.

20. See abcnews.go.com/International/deadly-anti-us-riots-pakistan-obamas-ad-denouncing/story?id=17291751. 

21. The UK government defines “intelligent customers” as 

“The capability of the organisation to have a clear understanding 

and knowledge of the product or service being supplied,” available from www.hse.gov.uk/humanfactors/topics/customers.htm. 

22. Lieutenant General William B Caldwell IV, “Towards 

Transition,” Defence Management Journal, Issue 51, undated, available from www.defencemanagement.com/article.asp?id=464&content_

name=Overview&article=15917.

23. See thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/63121-crs-calculates-cost-of-us-troop-presence-in-afghanistan. 

24. See www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/4481938/OfficialCasualties-soaring-in-20mph-zones.html. 
75

25. Kim Gragin and Scott Gerwehr, “Dissuading Terror, Strategic Influence and the Struggle Against Terrorism,” Washington, 

DC: The RAND Corporation, 2005.

26. William Hutchinson and Matthew Warren, “Influence 

Operations and Behavioural Change,” Paper prepared for the 

“European Conference On Information Warfare and Security,” 

Thessalonica, Greece, July 2012.

27. The unfortunate soldier was killed before such assets 

could be deployed.

28. See www.sada-e-azadi.net.

29. Cook, p. 201. 

30. See csc.asu.edu/wp-content/uploads/pdf/121.pdf.

31. Pertinent examples include Richard LaPiere, “Attitudes 

Versus Actions,” Social Forces Journal, 1934; and Martin Fishbein 

and Icek Azjen, a 1947 study re-published in Predicting & Changing Behavior: The Reasoned Action Approach, New York: Psychology 

Press, 2009. 

32. Richard Holbrooke, “Get the Message Out,” The Washington Post, October 28, 2001, p. B07.

33. Hutchinson and Warren.

34. See www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/MG607.html.

35. Al Ries and Jack Trout, Positioning: The Battle for Your 

Mind, New York: McGraw-Hill, 2000.

36. Richard Wike, “Wait—You still don’t like us?” Pew Global 

Attitude Project, Washington, DC, available from www.pewglobal.

org/2012/09/19/wait-you-still-dont-like-us/.

37. A Kurdish Muslim, Sala-ad Din, founded the Ayyubid dynasty, ruling over lands today known as Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and 

parts of Saudi Arabia and Yemen.
76

38. R. H. Crossman OBE MP, “Psychological Warfare in 

World War Two to the Royal United Services Institute,” RUSI 

Journal, Vol. XCVII, No. 587, August 1952.

39. Martin F. Herz, “Some Psychological Lessons from Leaflet 

Propaganda in World War II,” The Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 

13, No. 3, Autumn, 1949, pp. 471-486.

40. Karl Eikenberry, “There is hope yet for Afghanistan,” The 

Financial Times, November 20, 2012.

41. See www.instituteofcustomerservice.com/167-7669/UK-Customer-Satisfaction-Index-Results-July-2011.html.

42. Alan Travis, “Police in Britain Deemed Untrustworthy 

Compared with Europe, Says Study,” The Guardian Newspaper, 

December 12, 2011.

43. U.S. Department of Justice, “Satisfaction with Police—What 

Matters?” Washington, DC: Department of Justice, available from 

www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/194077.pdf.

44. A huge number of polls and surveys are undertaken in 

Afghanistan, and their results can be found all over the Internet: 

from large polling organizations employed by ISAF through to 

indivisible national initiatives to measure their individual performance. But just how reliable is the science of surveys? A significant determinant of the validity of polling is the manner in which 

the question is phrased and presented. But assuming this is done 

consistently across all polled groups, the reality of surveys is that 

they will only ever tell you what the polled thought about something at a particular point in time. Surveys and polling are highly 

temporal and closely related attitudinal. 

45. See www.edge.org/.

46. James Prochaska, Carlo DiClemente, and John Norcross, 

“In Search of How People Change. Applications to Addictive Behaviors,” American Psychologist, Vol. 47, No. 9, 1992, pp. 1102-1114.

47. Department of Defense Appropriations Bill; Report of the 

Committee on Appropriations, Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Defense, 2010, p. 67.
77

48. Office of the Secretary State for Defense, “Military Power 

of the People’s Republic of China 2008: Annual Report to Congress,”

Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Defense, 2008.

49. Office of the Secretary of State for Defense “Military and 

Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China, Annual Report to Congress,” Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Defense, 2011.

50. Timothy A Walton, “China’s Three Warfares,” Herndon, 

VA: Delex Consulting, January 18, 2012.

51. Ibid.

52. Timothy Thomas, “Dragon Bytes,” Ft. Leavenworth, KS: 

Foreign Military Studies Office, 2004, p. 98.

53. Rear Admiral Yang Yi, Chinese Navy, Interview with the 

BBC, available from www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-19710040.

54. See www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/09/26/the_calm_before_the_storm?page=0,2.

55. Christopher Williams, “Pentagon confirms Beijing’s antisatellite laser. Wi jammin’, and I hope Yu like jammin’ too,” The 

Register, October 6, 2006. 

56. See www.cryptome.org/cuw.htm#Part%20Two.

57. Adam Segal, “China’s Twitter War,” Asia Unbound, March 

22, 2012.

58. Alex Michael, “Cyber Probing: The Politicisation of Virtual 

Attack,” Swindon, UK: UK Defence Academy, September 2010. 

59. See www.weibo.com.

60. Timothy Thomas, “Comparing US, Russian and Chinese 

IO Concepts,” Ft. Leavenworth, KS: Foreign Military Studies 

Office, 2004.
78

61. Mark Lloyd, The Art of Military Deception, London, UK: 

Pen and Sword Books, 1997, p. 115.

62. Brian Daily and Patrick Parker, “Soviet Strategic Deception,” London, UK: The Free Press, 1987, p. 294.

63. Ibid.

64. Timothy Thomas, “Russia’s Reflexive Control Theory & 

The Military,” The Journal of Slavic & Military Studies, Vol. 17, London, UK: Frank Cass, 2004, pp. 237–256.

65. See www.au.af.mil/info-ops/perception.htm#reflexive.

66. Timothy Thomas, “The Russian View Of Information War,” 

Ft. Leavenworth, KS, Foreign Military Studies Office, 2000; Michael Crutcher, “The Russian Armed Forces at the Dawn of the Millennium,” Carlisle, PA: U.S. Army War College, Carlisle, 2000.

67. Ibid.

68. Ibid.

69. Ibid.

70. Stephen Cimbala, “Military Persuasion in War and Policy: 

The Power of Soft,” Westport, CT: Praeger Press, 2002, p. 23.

71. A reference, perhaps, to the large number of western intellectuals who sympathized with the Soviet Union and, in some 

cases, actively spied for it.

72. Charles Blandy, “Provocation, Deception, Entrapment: The 

Russo-Georgian Five Day War,” ARAG Paper 09/01, Swindon, UK: 

UK Defense Academy, 2009.

73. Author interview with Steve Tatham/Charles Blandy, 

Swindon, UK: UK Defence Academy, March 31, 2009.

74. Charles Blandy, “Georgia & Russia: A Further Deterioration in Relations,” ARAG paper, Swindon, UK: UK Defense 

Academy, August 22, 2008.
79

75. “Russian Strategic/Operational Influence Activities in 

Georgia 2008,” Briefing to NATO Senior Officers Info Ops Orientation Course, September 23, 2010.

76. Brooks.

77. See www.gao.gov/new.items/d07904.pdf.

78. Robert Zoellick, “Whither China: From Membership to Responsibility?” Vol. 16, No. 4, Washington, DC: National Bureau of 

Asian Research, December 2005.

79. Stephen Olsen and Clyde Prestowitz, “The Evolving Role 

of China in International Institutions,” prepared for The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, January 2011.

80. Remarks of Deputy Chief of Mission to London Barbara 

J. Stephenson to the UK Advanced Command and Staff Course, 

Swindon, UK, February 20, 2013.

81. Ibid.

82. David Betz, Cyberpower and International Security, Foreign 

Policy Research Institute Newsletter, June 2012.

83. Munoz.

84. Redefining Information Warfare Boundaries For An Army In A 

Wireless World, Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation, 2013, available from www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/mg1113.html.

85. See usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/military/story/2012-06-19/

leonie-pentagon-contracts/55696176/1.

86. Munoz.

87. See www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=1258.

88. See tv.msnbc.com/2013/01/07/americans-are-ready-for-sensible-reduction-in-military-spending/.
80

89. Lecture to UK Advanced Command and Staff Course, UK 

Defence Academy, Swindon, UK, Febuary 2013.

90. Matt Cavanagh, “Ministerial Decision Making in the Run 

up to the Helmand Deployment,” RUSI Journal, May/June 2012.

91. Michael Hastings, The Operators: The Wild and Terrifying 

Inside Story of America’s War in Afghanistan, London, UK: Orion 

Press, 2012.

92. See www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2046334/Afghanistanwar-10th-anniversary-invasion-half-way-there.html.

93. Cook.

94. Remarks of Deputy Chief of Mission to London Barbara 

J. Stephenson to the UK Advanced Command and Staff Course.

95. Obama’s Challenge in the Muslim World. Arab Spring Fails 

to improve US Image, Washington, DC: Pew Research Global Attitudes Project, released May 17, 2011.

96. Ibid.

97. 2012 Global Attitudes Survey, Pew Research Global Attitudes Project.

98. Evgeny Morozov, “What do They Teach at the Kremlin 

School of Bloggers,” Foreign Policy website available from neteffect.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/05/26/what_do_they_teach_at_kremlins_school_of_bloggers.
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